The Pacific Northwest has long been known for coffee, rain, and the quiet hum of tech innovation, but the region’s startup ecosystem is undergoing a seismic shift. The fall 2026 edition of the GeekWire 200, the definitive ranking of the region’s top privately held tech companies, tells a story of two powerful forces reshaping the economy: the explosive demand for artificial intelligence and the rise of advanced machinery for space, energy, and defense. At the center of this transformation sits a new No. 1: Temporal, a Bellevue-based company that most people have never heard of, yet whose software is quietly powering the AI revolution. Temporal builds “durable execution” infrastructure, which essentially keeps AI agents running reliably even when systems fail, restart, or scale unpredictably. That may sound deeply technical, but its importance is undeniable. The company just raised $550 million at a $12.55 billion valuation, more than doubling its value from earlier in the year, and its annualized revenue has surged past $250 million, up more than 200 percent in a single year. Customers include some of the biggest names in tech, from OpenAI to Nvidia to Netflix. For a region that has often played second fiddle to Silicon Valley, Temporal’s rise feels like a validation of the Pacific Northwest’s ability to build foundational, rather than merely flashy, technology.
The shakeup at the top of the GeekWire 200 reflects just how quickly the ground has shifted. Temporal dethroned Helion, the Everett-based fusion energy company that fell to No. 2 after a remarkable run at the top. Helion, backed by Sam Altman and SoftBank, grew its Series G round to $500 million and opened a Seattle office while surpassing 800 employees. But its path forward has become murkier: questions have emerged about whether it can deliver fusion power to Microsoft by 2028, a deadline that once felt audacious and now feels uncertain. Meanwhile, the rest of the top 10 is a fascinating mix of old-school engineering and cutting-edge software. Six of the top ten companies build physical things—fusion reactors, rockets, drones, radar, military vehicles, and even robots that zap weeds. Stoke Space, which landed at No. 3, jumped three spots after raising roughly $1 billion to develop the Nova rocket, a fully reusable launch vehicle. The company is expanding its test site in Moses Lake to 550 acres, preparing for a first flight in early 2027. Brinc, the drone maker that equips police and fire departments with aerial response tools, climbed to No. 6 and is moving into a new headquarters and factory in Seattle’s Queen Anne neighborhood with three times its previous production space. And Echodyne, which builds compact radar systems to detect and track drones, bounded 33 spots into the top 10 after opening a $40 million factory in Woodinville, a facility designed to churn out roughly 30,000 radars a year. These companies are not just innovating in the abstract; they are scaling up physical production in a way that feels almost old-fashioned in an industry obsessed with bits and bytes.
The remaining members of the top 10 add texture to the ranking, showing that the region’s tech economy is as diverse as its landscape. Truveta, at No. 4, is a health-data platform built by a consortium of health systems, and it is navigating a leadership transition as co-founders step in as interim co-CEOs while Terry Myerson retires. Chainguard, No. 5, is a cybersecurity company that has grown to 784 employees by making software supply chains more secure by default, a niche that has become essential as cyberattacks have become more sophisticated. Overland AI, No. 7, is bringing autonomy to military ground vehicles and made history as the first ground-autonomy company to serve as the prime contractor on a military production deal, a $19.7 million Marine Corps contract. Carbon Robotics, No. 8, is using lasers to weed farms and artificial intelligence to help agriculture become more sustainable; its new “Plant Profiles” feature lets farmers customize the AI model to their own crops and fields.Where Carbon Robotics wants to work alongside farmers, Dropzone, which rounds out the top 10, is tackling a different kind of problem: it builds autonomous AI agents for security operations. Dropzone is the fastest-growing company in the top 20, having more than doubled its headcount from 37 to 82 over the past year. The story of these companies is not just about technology but about the people behind it—engineers who left comfortable jobs at giants, founders who are betting their careers on difficult problems, and workers who are filling factories and offices across the region. There is a palpable sense of momentum, but also a recognition that with great growth comes great responsibility. The GeekWire 200 has always tried to capture this human element, combining objective data with editorial insight to give readers a sense of not just who is succeeding, but why it matters.
Beyond the top 10, the rest of the ranking is filled with companies that are making bold moves and redefining their industries, often in surprising ways. Starcloud, based in Redmond, jumped 23 spots to No. 52 after raising $250 million at a $2.3 billion valuation to build data centers in orbit, with Nvidia joining as an investor—a concept that sounds like science fiction but is becoming increasingly plausible as AI workloads demand massive computing power. Levanta, a creator-marketing platform, climbed to No. 72 after raising $22 million and reporting that its revenue is up 80 percent this year, a sign that the creator economy continues to mature. AIM Intelligent Machines, at No. 100, is dreaming even bigger: the autonomous construction startup is building self-driving bulldozers for Earth and has laid out a vision for eventually using them on Mars. Portal Space Systems, No. 107, is preparing its first Starburst spacecraft for launch, while Digs, a Vancouver, Wash., homebuilding AI startup, raised $25.3 million led by BuildersFirstSource, which plans to offer the platform to its 140,000 builder clients. Augmodo, which makes AI-powered camera badges for retail workers, raised $21 million at a $350 million valuation and is expanding into warehouses and factories, raising important questions about workplace surveillance and the future of labor. Clarify, an AI-native CRM startup, acquired San Francisco’s Seam AI and was named to Madrona’s IA40 for the second straight year. Nuance Labs, founded by former Apple researchers, raised a $50 million Series A led by Lightspeed.tewer NewDays, a dementia-care startup, expanded its seed round to $16 million and expanded into Nevada Temp. These companies are not all destined to become household names, but together they represent the region’s willingness to tackle hard problems, from housing construction to memory care, from orbital data centers to the way we buy and sell goods.
The newcomers to the GeekWire 200 are perhaps the most exciting part of this edition, because they show what is bubbling up from the region’s labs, garages, and co-working spaces. The highest debut is Entire, at No. 101, founded by former GitHub CEO Thomas Dohmke, which launched a distributed Git network built to handle the load of AI coding agents—a tool that could fundamentally change how software is written. BrainChild Bio, a Seattle Children’s spinout, debuted at No. 117 after raising $116 million to advance a CAR T therapy for a deadly childhood brain cancer, a reminder that some startups measure success not in valuations but in lives saved. BuyWander, which runs a retail-returns marketplace, relocated from Spokane to Kent and raised $21 million led by Madrona and Inspired Capital. Endurance, founded by former SpaceX engineer Andrew Redd, is tapping undersea volcanoes for geothermal power, an audacious idea that could provide clean energy on a massive scale. General Robotics, led by Microsoft veterans, says its AI has cut robot setup time from a month to hours. Thira, No. 140, brings together Apptio co-founders Sunny Gupta and Kurt Shintaffer for an enterprise AI startup backed by Madrona with $21 million. Golden Analytics, led by Tableau’s longtime chief product officer Francois Ajenstat, is using AI to challenge traditional business intelligence tools, and it has already raised $21 million. Resect AI, No. 158, launched from stealth with $25 million to catch AI hallucinations before they happen, a critical problem as more industries rely on generative AI. NLM Photonics, a University of Washington spinout, is making materials that reduce the power needed to move data between chips. Interlune, a moon-mining startup, demonstrated a process to extract helium-3 from ordinary helium, moving one step closer to its lunar ambitions. Harell Data, founded by an Adaptive Biotechnologies co-founder, is connecting AI developers with proprietary scientific data. And Noösphere Labs, backed by Trilogy and Madrona, is working on “physical AI” under former Meta research director Kevin Carlberg. These newcomers are a diverse bunch, but they share a common thread: a willingness to take enormous risks on the assumption that the future will be weirder, more automated, and more deeply integrated with AI and space than we can currently imagine.
No ranking is complete without saying goodbye, and the Fall 2026 GeekWire 200 includes several notable departures that mark milestones in their own right. Agility Robotics, the Salem, Ore., humanoid robot maker that was previously No. 5, left the list as it prepares to go public in a $2.5 billion SPAC merger expected to close in the fourth quarter. The company unveiled Digit 5, a robot that can lift 50 pounds and is designed to work alongside people without safety barriers—a significant step toward a future where humanoid robots are part of everyday life. Common Room, a sales-intelligence startup, left after agreeing to be acquired by Zoom. Auger, the supply chain startup led by former Amazon operations chief Dave Clark, moved its headquarters to Dallas, although it still maintains a major engineering hub in Bellevuecars whose own departure highlights the difficult question of what counts as a “regional” company. As for the GeekWire 200 itself, the methodology remains deliberately human-centric: companies must be privately held, founded within roughly the past 15 years, and headquartered in the Pacific Northwest with their leadership based in the region. The ranking is not scientific, and the specific numbers should be taken with a grain of salt, but it has proven its worth over the years as a resource for investors, job seekers, service providers, and anyone who wants to understand the region’s tech community. This edition shows a Pacific Northwest that is more ambitious and more confident than ever, building everything from fusion reactors to lunar mining spacecraft, from AI security agents to lasers that weed fields. Behind the rankings are thousands of people who chose to build here, who decided that the Pacific Northwest was the place where they could do their best work. Their stories are the real heart of the GeekWire 200, and they are only just getting started.
