Washington’s startup community is not only alive and well, but changing with the times. A plethora of startups made the Geekwire 200, representing new ideas in health, energy, artificial intelligence, and other industries of the future.
Exciting times, given that Washington is on a path to reinvent its lineup of key industries, building on its legacy in technology, aerospace and natural resources.
It shouldn’t come as any surprise that 35% of the companies listed on the Geekwire 200 are on the list for the first time. The startup community in Washington has a rich history of being forward thinking, never afraid to take on a new challenge or seize a new opportunity. Times change, but our legendary pioneer spirit and insatiable curiosity don’t.
Some of the newcomers cracked the top 10 for the first time, but others have marked their 15th anniversaries, at which point Geekwire considers them to be past the startup stage so they’re aren’t eligible for the quarterly ranking. Top-10’ers included a business-to-business real estate company, a virtual reality community a sales automation startup, Outreach. Other companies making the list for the first time represented other high growth pursuits such as drones, robotics, cybersecurity and machine learning.
The AI, machine learning and automation fields continue to bring new players to the forefront, including:
- Falkon (#140), AI-driven sales and marketing recommendations.
- Aigen (#142), AI-powered robots that target weeds in agriculture.
- Rhythms (#149), AI to identify and implement successful team habits.
- Outbound AI (#143), AI tools for healthcare administrators.
- Protect AI (#152), security for machine learning systems and AI apps.
- Yoodli (#164), an AI coach for public speaking and communication.
- Phaidra (#165), artificial intelligence tools for industrial businesses.
- Pictory (#167), AI for short-form video creation.
- AdaptX (#178), AI-driven data analysis for healthcare providers
- Data Skrive (#179), automating the creation of sports-related content.
- Docugami (#187), AI document engineering.
- Observa (#195), AI for bricks-and-mortar store analytics.
- Koidra (#196), greenhouse automation technology.
See the full GeekWire 200 ranking for Q1 2024.
New ideas in clean energy production were also represented, including Helion Energy (#33) and Zap Energy (#95) which are exploring breakthroughs in fusion energy.
Geekwire’s rankings are culled from the publication’s list of 1,300 tech startups that have headquarters in the Pacific Northwest, including British Columbia.
As any entrepreneur knows, the nature of a startup is to ramp up and succeed or fail fast. But the health of the startup community – particularly in pursuits that will define Washington’s economy of the future – is hard to ignore.