Coverage of the 2025 GeekWire Awards, presented by Astound Business Solutions , the PNW’s annual startup and technology awards.The finalists for Deal of the Year at the 2025 GeekWire Awards.Three major acquisitions and two significant funding rounds make up the transactions featured in the Deal of the Year category at the 2025 GeekWire Awards.The award, presented by Wilson Sonsini, is aimed at recognizing deals that had a significant impact on emerging Pacific Northwest companies. The finalists include Jama Software, Lexion, Smartsheet, Stoke Space and Truveta.Seattle startup Rhythms was the Deal of the Year winner last year after raising a $26 million seed round for its platform that connects to various systems inside a company and uses AI to analyze a company’s “rhythms,” or habits and patterns — monthly business reviews, quarterly retrospectives, weekly cross-functional meetings, etc.Continue reading for details on each of this year’s finalists, and vote here or below.Jama Software LogoJama Software, makers of a product development platform, agreed to be acquired by technology investment firm Francisco Partners in a $1.2 billion deal in March 2024. Tim Porter, a managing director at Madrona, which first invested in Jama in 2013, called the deal “one of the largest software exits for Portland.”Lexion was acquired by Docusign for $165 million last May in a successful exit for the company which got its start in 2018 after co-founders Gaurav Oberoi (CEO), Emad Elwany (CTO), and James Baird (principal architect) met at the Allen Institute for AI in Seattle. Lexion, makers of AI-powered contract management technology raised about $36 million since its founding.Smartsheet went private again after the Bellevue, Wash.-based enterprise software giant completed an $8.4 billion acquisition by Blackstone and Vista Equity Partners in January. The company, which launched in 2005 and went public in 2018, makes cloud-based enterprise work management technologies for managing and tracking projects, collaborating, storing data, and automating and assigning tasks, among other capabilities. It serves 85% of the Fortune 500 as customers.Stoke Space raised $260 million in a new founding round announced in January to finish the development of its fully reusable Nova rocket and complete construction of a launch complex in Florida

DocuSign will stay a public company, according to the electronic signature platform’s CEO. Allan Thygesen made that pronouncement in an interview with CNBC published Wednesday (May 23), following reports that private equity firms had considered a takeover. “We’re focused on building a great, independent public company,” Thygesen said during a partner event the company hosted in London. “I joined DocuSign as a public company, it’s a very exciting time right now, so that’s our plan.”