Smartsheet CEO Mark Mader accepts the Next Tech Titan award at the GeekWire Awards in 2016. Eight years later, Smartsheet is a publicly traded company valued at more than $5 billion, recently surpassing $1 billion in annualized recurring revenue. (GeekWire File Photo / Kevin Lisota)Which company will be the next tech titan to emerge from the Pacific Northwest?GeekWire’s startup coverage seeks to answer this fundamental question every day, at least implicitly. But once a year, we formalize the process through the Next Tech Titan category in the GeekWire Awards, our annual event recognizing the top innovators and companies in Seattle and the Pacific Northwest.Continue reading for details on each finalist, and a sampling of past Next Tech Titan winners as evidence of the predictive capabilities of this award. Vote here or below in this GeekWire Awards category, which is presented by Baird.And the finalists for Next Tech Titan are … MotherDuck, a serverless data analytics platform built on the open-source platform DuckDB, an in-process online analytical processing database, or OLAP. Its technology makes it simpler for businesses to run analytics on their data, rather than relying on more expensive services from large cloud vendors

SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Seattle-based startup Statsig, a leader in the product experimentation space, announced itself to San Francisco in a very noticeable way, reinforcing itself as a key player in revolutionizing how businesses use data to build products. Founded in 2021 by former Facebook engineers, Statsig has quickly risen to prominence by empowering companies of all sizes to harness Big Tech-level product development tools. With its advanced feature flagging tools, automated A/B testing, and integrated product analytics, Statsig is democratizing access to world-class product development tools. With its latest brand takeover in the heart of San Francisco, Statsig is hard to miss—and it’s a company that shouldn’t be. With customers like Atlassian, Notion, OfferUp, WhatNot, and over 3,000 self-service customers, Statsig helps tech companies of all sizes build a culture of experimentation. The company’s integrated toolkit - which includes experimentation, feature flags, and product analytics - is set to transform the landscape of tech development

Coverage of the GeekWire 200 , our quarterly ranking of Pacific Northwest tech startups. See the latest GeekWire 200 ranking .GeekWire Illustration / Canva Pro ImageA new wave of startups is transforming the technology community in the Seattle area and the surrounding region, fueled by breakthroughs in artificial intelligence, health, energy, and other emerging technologies.That’s the takeaway from one of the biggest updates in the 11-year history of the GeekWire 200, our quarterly ranking of the top privately held technology startups in Seattle and the rest of the Pacific Northwest.See the full GeekWire 200 ranking for Q1 2024.More than 70 companies, or 35%, are completely new to the GeekWire 200 in this latest update, reflecting the dynamic nature of the industry and changes in our method for calculating the ranking (details below).Companies moving into the top 10 for the first time include Place (#4), the business-to-business real estate services and technology platform backed by Goldman Sachs and other investors; and Rec Room (#9), the popular virtual reality community that has cemented its place as a leading app on multiple VR platforms.Several companies graduated from the GeekWire 200 by reaching their 15th birthdays, which makes them no longer “startups” by our parameters. They include social media management company Hootsuite and contract technology company Icertis, previously #1 and #2, respectively, which cleared the way for sales automation startup Outreach to claim the top spot.Startups appearing on the GeekWire 200 for the first time reflect hot industries such as robotics and drones (Agility Robotics, #13; Brinc, #76); developer tools (Temporal, #66; Statsig, #74); cybersecurity (Chainguard #111; Vouched, #135), and health and life sciences (Parse #110; Ozette, #159).And like everything else in the tech world, the GeekWire 200 is being transformed by AI and machine learning. Many of the companies making their debut on the GeekWire 200 are developing or significantly leveraging AI. Among them:Falkon (#140), AI-driven sales and marketing recommendations.(#140), AI-driven sales and marketing recommendations. Aigen (#142), AI-powered robots that target weeds in agriculture.(#142), AI-powered robots that target weeds in agriculture