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Tech Moves: Microsoft AI exec joins Niantic Spatial; Allen fund names first investment chief; Zillow AI leader heads to Stripe. by Todd Bishop on Sep 25, 2026 at 7:14 am - Niantic Spatial hired Dave Citron as chief product officer. He joined from Microsoft AI, where he was corporate vice president of product on the Superintelligence team and helped build and launch Microsoft's first frontier foundation models. San Francisco-based Niantic Spatial, spun out of Pokémon Go maker Niantic, builds spatial AI models and services, including a visual positioning system trained in part on images crowdsourced from Pokémon Go players. The company has an engineering team in Bellevue, Wash. The Seattle-area executive was previously senior director of product for the Gemini app at Google DeepMind and worked on Google Meet and Google Duo. He began his career at Microsoft in 2005, helping take OneDrive from its first release to more than 200 million monthly users. "AI is remarkably good at reading and writing, but it still doesn't understand the physical world well enough to act in it safely," Citron said in the announcement. - The Fund for Science and Technology, the Seattle-based foundation responsible for giving away a large portion of the late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen's fortune, named Jane Dietze its first chief investment officer. She starts Jan. 4, 2027, after finishing the year at Brown University, where she has held that role since 2018. Brown says its endowment grew from $3.2 billion to $8 billion over the 10 years through fiscal 2025. Her deputy, Joshua Kennedy, will succeed her. Dietze previously held investment roles at Bowdoin College, Fortress Investment Group and Columbia Capital. The foundation launched publicly in August 2025 with a mandate to deploy at least $500 million over four years in bioscience, the environment and AI for good. It also funds the Allen Institute and Ai2, the Allen Institute for AI. The fund started with a $3.1 billion endowment from Allen's estate and is expected to oversee a large portion of the proceeds from the sale of Allen's sports teams. Its first CEO, Lynda Stuart, stepped down in May. - Nicholas Stevens joined payments giant Stripe as head of product for agentic commerce, working from Seattle, after a decade at Zillow. He was most recently Zillow's vice president of product for AI and data, leading product strategy for the company's AI products and data platform. His LinkedIn profile notes that he drove the partnership that made Zillow one of seven global launch partners for OpenAI's ChatGPT apps platform. He previously worked in product at Prismatic. "I believe AI buying & selling on your behalf can be magical," he wrote. - Scowtt, a Kirkland, Wash.-based startup that uses AI to predict which sales prospects will become customers, named Ben Trenda chief revenue officer. Trenda is an ad tech veteran who worked at Overture/Yahoo, AOL and Rubicon Project, and co-founded iSocket. Scowtt says it is approaching $10 million in annual recurring revenue. - The American Astronomical Society named University of Washington astronomy professor Emily Levesque the next editor in chief of its journals, including The Astrophysical Journal. She takes charge in August 2027, succeeding Ethan Vishniac. - ThriftBooks, the online used-book seller founded in Seattle in 2003, named Carla Anderson Skogland chief financial officer. She had been interim CFO since April. Anderson Skogland, who is based in the Seattle area, was previously CFO of Sono Bello. She spent 11 years at Amazon, and earlier worked at T-Mobile and for more than 15 years at Starbucks. - Michael Mann is stepping down as executive director of Clean & Prosperous, a climate policy group that backed Washington's Climate Commitment Act, once a successor is chosen. He took over on an interim basis from the late founder David Giuliani and led the group for five years. Mann, founder of consulting firm Cyan Strategies, previously led the City of Seattle's Office of Sustainability and Environment. - Lani Ramos joined Yoodli, a Seattle startup that uses AI roleplays for communications training, to build its renewals function. Ramos spent 13 years at Tableau and Salesforce, most recently as director of renewal for North America. - Former Starbucks CFO Rachel Ruggeri joined the board of San Diego-based Jack in the Box. Ruggeri, a Seattle-area finance leader, spent more than two decades at Starbucks and was its CFO from 2021 to March 2025. She also serves on the board of Stryker. - Victor Fetter is stepping down at the end of the year as chief technology and business systems officer at Everett, Wash.-based Fortive after nearly seven years. Rich Noonan, Fortive's chief information security and technology operations officer, will become CIO. Fetter, who is based in Mississippi, plans to expand his board work and angel investing. - And in case you missed it: * Microsoft moved its communications team under President Brad Smith. Brent Colburn is interim communications leader, and longtime comms chief Frank Shaw will serve as an advisor through the end of the year. * Truelist founder Carey Armstrong, a former Zillow vice president, is joining Mainstay as chief strategy officer after Mainstay acquired her startup.

Zillow names Rikki Tremblay principal accounting officer. Jennifer Rock will stay in an advisory role through March 1, 2027 Article Summary. Zillow appointed longtime finance executive Rikki Tremblay as principal accounting officer effective Sept. 17, 2026. Chief accounting officer Jennifer Rock retired the same day and will remain an adviser through March 1, 2027. AI Summary Zillow Group has promoted longtime finance executive Rikki Tremblay to vice president, principal accounting officer, as current chief accounting officer and principal accounting officer Jennifer Rock prepares to retire, according to a company filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Thursday. Rock stepped down from her roles effective Sept. 17, 2026, and will remain with the company in an advisory position through March 1, 2027, the company said. Zillow noted that her decision to retire was not the result of any disagreement with the company on operations, policies, accounting practices or financial disclosures. The board of directors appointed Tremblay to the principal accounting officer role on Sept. 16, 2026. The move keeps continuity in Zillow's accounting leadership at a time when public companies face heightened scrutiny around internal controls, revenue recognition and stock-based compensation. Tremblay has held a series of senior accounting and reporting roles at Zillow since joining the company in December 2014. Most recently she served as vice president of reporting, technical accounting and controls from February 2025 to September 2026. Before that, she was senior director of reporting, technical accounting and controls from February 2023 to February 2025, and senior director of financial reporting and technical accounting from February 2019 to February 2023. She also held other financial reporting and accounting leadership roles at the company between 2014 and 2019. Before Zillow, Tremblay worked in audit at Deloitte & Touche LLP from September 2009 to November 2014, most recently as an audit manager.

Zillow-MRED ruling leaves questions as parties mull next steps. Wednesday, September 16th, 2026 Last night's ruling in Zillow's lawsuit against Chicago-based MLS MRED and mega-brokerage Compass represented a significant legal setback for the portal, even as the larger fight over policy and market power plays out on multiple fronts. A source close to MRED told RISMedia shortly after the court ruling that the MLS is prepared to enforce...