Washington Gov. Bob Ferguson last week announced an Economic Development Council to “identify practical actions that strengthen Washington’s economy, expand opportunity and help more Washingtonians succeed.”

To Ferguson’s credit, he may finally be recognizing that Washington’s business climate is deteriorating.

While he didn’t admit any responsibility for that decline, the number of companies and highly successful job creators that have said “Bye Bob” and taken jobs to other states — Starbucks and Janicki Industries to name two recent examples — cannot have escaped his attention.

Who’s who

The council’s composition gives us a glimpse into the governor’s economic mindset. Unfortunately, it isn’t forward-looking.

@media (max-width: 600px) {
aside.callout { float:none !important; max-width:100% !important; margin-left:0 !important; margin-right:0 !important; }
aside.callout .callout-img { display:none !important; }
}

There are more nonprofits and governmental agencies than businesses. Except for one small homebuilder, none of the participating companies were founded this century. Calling the council a “historic convening” is unintentionally apt.

There is zero representation from entrepreneurs, the startup ecosystem or anyone building the industries of the future. The mayor of Cleveland remains better plugged into our startup community than any politician in Washington.

The largest participants on the governor’s new council are notable for mass layoffs and shifting their workforces out of the state.

Amazon and Microsoft have each cut tens of thousands of jobs, as they become more capital-intensive and lean into AI-driven productivity. Boeing now has nearly two-thirds of its employees outside Washington state, and that shift continues.

Oblivious to AI

Also missing from the governor’s framing is the single biggest force shaping the economy today: AI.

He namechecks quantum computing, advanced manufacturing, and clean energy, but omits AI.

New jobs overwhelmingly come from young growth companies, and AI is driving new company formation. 

Beyond startups, AI is going to dramatically reshape knowledge work and boost productivity in every single organization (including, hopefully, government). 

It is impossible to talk about “the next chapter of economic prosperity for our state” without discussing the implications of AI.

The committee agenda

“The council will meet quarterly and submit advisory reports to the governor with its findings and recommendations.” 

The first report, in its entirety, should say “STOP DRIVING BUSINESS AWAY.”

Starbucks, perhaps not surprisingly, was not invited to participate on the council, though Gov. Ferguson tells The Seattle Times he understands the coffee giant’s importance to the region and “has a direct line of communication with them.”

The governor suggests he “would be open to more aggressive financial incentives to attract out-of-state business,” but why not prioritize keeping companies that are already here? 

The zero-sum view of job creation — that you must pay to lure companies from other states — reflects a profound ignorance of the magic of economic growth.

Just nurture an environment conducive to growth. Effective and efficient delivery of public services, predictable taxes, and sensible regulation. But that would require changes in how state government operates today.

In other words, grow what you’ve got.

Learning from Cleveland

I have argued that the software era is ending, and we need to find our next economic act in Washington state. Prosperity is precarious and can’t be taken for granted. 

The governor was invited, through a representative, to join GeekWire’s recent visit to Cleveland but never responded. I still hope he can learn from Cleveland as part of his interest in economic development.

Cleveland’s experience after its industrial economy fractured painfully demonstrates the potential downside we face. More than a half century later, that city is still working extraordinarily hard to recover. 

The mayor of Cleveland observed that when the Rust Belt started to rust: “We didn’t pivot fast enough, and the world left us behind.”

Today, every level of government in Ohio is laser-focused on jobs, economic growth and prosperity. Our state should be just as focused, especially as our economic tectonic plates shift.

It is a very positive milestone that our governor is seeking “the next chapter of economic prosperity for our state.”

But committees don’t drive economic growth. It starts with “first do no harm.”

Source link

Source link

Tesla’s driverless cabs have reached a fifth US city. This time, there is no human minder in the car at all.

The company rolled out its Robotaxi service in part of Miami on Friday, it announced on X. A map in the post showed a small patch of West Miami, well away from the busy downtown. That mirrors how Tesla started in Dallas and Houston earlier this year.

No safety monitor this time

One detail stands out. Tesla is running the Miami cars without a safety monitor, its VP of AI software Ashok Elluswamy said on X. The Information first flagged the change. It marks a jump in confidence. When Tesla launched in Austin in June 2025, it put a monitor in the passenger seat. The company dropped them there only later.

The rollout follows a familiar script. Tesla opens in a tight zone, then widens it. Austin grew from a small area to the whole metro last month. Miami will probably follow the same path.

Advertisement

A crowded road

The 💜 of EU tech

The latest rumblings from the EU tech scene, a story from our wise ol’ founder Boris, and some questionable AI art. It’s free, every week, in your inbox. Sign up now!

Tesla is not alone in the city. Waymo launched its driverless service in Miami in April. Amazon’s Zoox is testing there too. Miami is fast becoming a proving ground for robotaxis, much as Phoenix and Austin were before it.

Tesla still trails the market leader on scale. Waymo runs a far bigger fleet, and the gap is a matter of public record. But Tesla is moving fast, and its camera-only approach is cheaper to deploy than the sensor-laden systems its rivals favour.

Advertisement

What comes next

The company wants to go much further, fast. On its April earnings call, CEO Elon Musk said Tesla aims to offer the service in a dozen states by the end of the year. It has publicly floated cities in Florida, Arizona and Nevada as the next stops, including Orlando, Tampa and Phoenix.

That timeline is ambitious. Tesla has a habit of missing its self-driving deadlines, so the map may fill in slower than Musk suggests. There is also the safety question. Taking out the human monitor raises the stakes on every ride, and regulators are watching. Tesla has already settled a fatal Full Self-Driving crash case. For now, though, the driverless map keeps growing. Miami is the latest pin.

Source link

Amazon’s carbon footprint jumped 16% last year after several years of little or no increase. The company emitted nearly 80.9 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent in 2025. By comparison, that’s slightly higher than the nation of New Zealand’s emissions.

Amazon disclosed its climate-related data in its most comprehensive sustainability report to date, which includes a breakdown of its carbon sources, water use and other environmental impacts.

Not surprisingly, energy use showed the biggest rate of increase in the 2025 carbon tally as Amazon and other tech companies are working to rapidly expand their data center capacity to meet AI computing demand.

For the first time since 2019, the company also reported an uptick in its “carbon intensity” — a measure of how much carbon was emitted relative to each dollar of revenue. Amazon has promoted this metric as a sign that it can decouple its growth from its climate impacts.

Despite emissions moving in the wrong direction and ongoing data center-driven challenges, the Seattle-area company remains committed to its pledge of net-zero carbon emissions by 2040.

When it comes to that goal, “I remain confident and optimistic in the overarching vision and the long-term progress we continue to make toward it,” said Kara Hurst, Amazon’s chief sustainability officer, in the foreword to the company’s annual report.

The report highlights areas of success that include:

• Data center efficiency: Amazon’s data centers are 9% more efficient than the public cloud average and 30% more efficient than on-premises data centers at directing energy toward computing rather than cooling, lighting or overhead.
• Data center water use: Amazon is seven times more efficient in its water use than the industry average thanks to its use of air cooling at most sites, most of the year.
• 100% clean energy overall: For the third year running, Amazon matched its company-wide electricity use with an equivalent volume of purchased clean energy, although it technically still draws on fossil fuels for some of its energy.
• Electric vehicle fleet: It has the largest corporate EV fleet in North America, with more than 52,700 delivery vans worldwide. It’s halfway to meeting its 2030 goal of 100,000 EVs.

The company also reported improvements in reducing packaging and plastic use in delivered items; increasing use of low-carbon building materials in data center construction; and progress toward becoming water positive at its data centers, meaning it aims to replenish more water to communities than it uses.

@media (max-width: 600px) {
aside.callout { float:none !important; max-width:100% !important; margin-left:0 !important; margin-right:0 !important; }
aside.callout .callout-img { display:none !important; }
}

The Amazon-backed Climate Pledge — an effort to get other organizations to commit to net-zero carbon emissions by 2040 — has grown to 656 signatories after adding 107 companies this year. It marks a notable increase at a time when companies are growing quieter about climate commitments, with some stepping back from earlier goals.

But the surge in data center investment shows little sign of slowing, which will keep complicating Amazon’s path to lower emissions. CEO Andy Jassy said Amazon expects to spend a record $200 billion in capital expenditures this year, including “AI, chips, robotics, and low-Earth orbit satellites.”

Not all reactions to that buildout have been positive — even within the company. Members of Amazon Employees for Climate Justice this month testified before the Seattle City Council in favor of data center requirements for renewable energy and labor protections, though Amazon doesn’t operate any data centers within city limits.

In response to the sustainability report, the employee group was critical of the increased emissions and accused the company of pressuring carbon accounting standards bodies — including the Greenhouse Gas Protocol and the Science-Based Targets Initiative — to adopt weaker rules.

More than 1,000 employees have signed an open letter drafted last year criticizing Amazon’s “warp-speed approach” to its AI development, the group added.

In the report, Amazon CSO Hurst acknowledged that AI-fueled advances could catalyze sustainability solutions or slow progress toward climate goals.

“But what alternative do we have,” she said, “but to continue to invest, learn, and move forward to try to solve one of the world’s most challenging issues?”

Editor’s note: Story updated at 11:56 a.m. with comment from Amazon Employees for Climate Justice.

Source link