Head of Hardware Test / Reliability Test Lead

GeekWire’s startup coverage documents the Pacific Northwest entrepreneurial scene. Sign up for our weekly startup newsletter , and check out the GeekWire funding tracker and venture capital directory .The Port of Seattle. (GeekWire File Photo / Kurt Schlosser)Startups are a long game. Focus on your product and your customers.That’s the message some venture capitalists are sharing with startup leaders following President Trump’s tariff announcement Thursday, which sent U.S. stock markets tumbling and erased more than $3 trillion in market value.“One of the best things about venture-backed startups is that you have to take a ten-year view because that’s how long it takes to build a company that matters,” said Chris DeVore, founding managing partner at Founders’ Co-op. “In that context, the tariff nonsense is mostly just noise.”Peter Mueller, founding partner at Breakwater Ventures, echoed that sentiment in a note to entrepreneurs at Foundations, a Seattle startup community.“In theory, a high-growth startup succeeds because it finds a thing people want, builds it, and sells it, not because the Fed decides to cut rates or because the administration issued a tariff policy,” he wrote in the note, which was shared with GeekWire.But for startups working industries like hardware, manufacturing, and consumer-packaged goods — or those that deal with global supply chains — the new tariffs may pose short-term challenges.“We are closely monitoring the situation,” said Kenny Lee, co-founder at Aigen, a Seattle-area agriculture robotics startup

LJUBLJANA, Slovenia, Nov. 13, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- The International Research Centre on Artificial Intelligence (IRCAI), an organization under the auspices of UNESCO, in collaboration with Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS), today announced the selection of eight groundbreaking startups as the latest recipients of the Compute for Climate Fellowship. This global program fully funds proof-of-concepts of innovative solutions that use advanced computing and artificial intelligence (AI) in cloud to address the climate crisis in key areas, including clean energy, low-carbon transportation, sustainable agriculture and food, circular economy, sustainable buildings, greenhouse gas accounting, carbon removal, and environment risk.IRCAI and AWS Launch Compute For Climate Fellowship to Fund New Tech Solutions Addressing the Climate Crisis"At IRCAI, we believe that the climate crisis demands innovative, cross-sector solutions. By spearheading public-private partnerships, we aim to unite industry, government, and research leaders to push the boundaries of AI and research and development (R&D), in ways that directly combat climate change," said Davor Orlic, Chief Operating Officer of IRCAI. "The Compute for Climate Fellowship is built on the foundational pillars necessary for impactful AI innovation in addressing climate change: substantial compute resources, dedicated R&D, and cutting-edge talent, while access to advanced computing power enables the data-intensive demands of AI, it is equally vital to pair this with rigorous R&D alongside the expertise of industry leaders

The farm robotics sector has shown some resilience in 2024 and continues to bring innovative products to market, despite the challenging year for fundraising. In the first half of 2024, the AgFunder-defined Farm Robotics, Mechanization, and Equipment category has raised nearly $399 million, a 21.1 % decline from $505.5 million in H1 2023. [Disclosure: AgFunderNews’ parent company is AgFunder.]. However, this drop needs to be considered in the context of a general investment contraction that has characterized the last 18 months. Overall agrifoodtech investment was also down in H1 2024: 12.5% compared to H1 2023. The drop in funding to the robotics sector is more or less in line with general trends