Office furniture from the former Zulily headquarters in Seattle. (Evergreen Goodwill Photo)
Zulily may no longer be a dominant player in Seattle’s tech scene, but physical pieces of the online retailer will live on in Evergreen Goodwill facilities across the region.
Hundreds of office chairs, desks, kitchen appliances, IT equipment, and more has been donated to Goodwill by Vanbarton Group, a commercial real estate investment firm that now owns the onetime Zulily building at 2601 Elliott Ave.
Vanbarton plans to convert the building, which occupies a full block near the waterfront, to 262 apartments, according to a Daily Journal of Commerce report from July.
A once-prominant online retailer, Zulily was a darling of Seattle’s growing tech scene when it was valued at $4 billion following its IPO in 2013. But after QVC parent Qurate paid $2.4 billion to buy the company in 2015, it was sold to Los Angeles investment firm Regent in May 2023 and eventually shut down.
In March, Zulily got a new owner for the third time in two years when Beyond, which emerged as a surprise buyer in 2024, announced plans to sell a majority stake in Zulily to Lyons Trading Company, the parent company of flash sales site Proozy.com.
Storage racks donated from the former Zulily headquarters in Seattle. (Evergreen Goodwill Photo)
Evergreen Goodwill said in a news release that the donation, facilitated by Vanbarton Group’s outreach, saved the nonprofit an estimated $100,000 in equipment costs and diverted valuable resources from landfills.
The office items are being repurposed in multiple locations, including Goodwill’s new Georgetown operations center, scheduled to open this fall, and job training and education centers that it operates in five counties.
Remaining items will be sold in Goodwill stores, with proceeds supporting free job training and education programs for people facing barriers to employment, according to Goodwill.
Day job: Senior design technologist for Amazon Devices, working on concepts for new devices or new features on existing devices, such as Fire TV, Alexa, and Echo smart speakers.
Out-of-office passion: Using machines to create art.
Before he pursued a bachelor’s degree in computer science, Maksim Surguy made an initial — and brief — run at a bachelor’s in art.
“Two weeks later, I realized that I suck at art and I switched to computer science,” he laughed.
Fourteen years after completing his education at California State University, Fullerton, Surguy has found happiness and success in marrying the two disciplines, as a technologist and an artist in Seattle.
“My sketching is not to the level that I want, so instead I use code to create artwork,” he said in describing the “robot art” that occupies his free time.
Surguy not only relies on machines to generate his artwork, he creates the software tools that facilitate such art, whether the finished pieces exist as digital NFTs or as physical works such as pen plotter drawings made via scalable vector graphics.
“I spend a lot more time making the tools than actually using them,” Surguy said. “But other people use them to actually make something. So I enjoy both sides of this.”
A screenshot from a tutorial video demonstrating Maks Surguy’s workflow for the artwork “Vector Wave, 2022.” (Image courtesy of Maks Surguy)
For a hardware/software project, he created a 3D-printed drawing machine with his own electronics program. During the process, he couldn’t find a community for like-minded people who make such things. So he started DrawingBots, a website/Discord that’s attracted thousands of artists and engineers.
Surguy was born and raised in Ukraine and was an accomplished breakdancer who competed as a professional in Eastern Europe when he was younger. He moved to the U.S. in 2004.
He’s been at Amazon for six years and his artwork has been displayed in the company’s headquarters buildings, in public exhibitions — including at Seattle’s NFT Museum, and on his website and social media channels. He’s also written extensively about technology.
And in the blurring space between human and AI-created artwork, he’s leaning further into technology.
“I use AI for a lot of things, and especially now with code, it makes it easier to create tools that are custom and specific for whatever use case,” Surguy said. “I just open-sourced one last weekend. It’s a tool that allows artists to preview their artwork, how it’s going to look before they make it on paper. So it saves them time and money and art supplies.”
Prints of some of Maksim Surguy’s “plotter” artwork. (Photo courtesy of Maks Surguy)
Most rewarding aspect of this pursuit: Surguy most enjoys the growing community he helped foster around the tools and art he makes.
“I got to know thousands of people that do this kind of stuff and are very interesting people,” he said. “Some of them were TED speakers. Some of them are PhDs, very well known researchers, scientists, artists. I had conversations with all of these people and consider some of them my friends. So that’s the most rewarding part.”
The lessons he brings back to work: “This kind of procedural and algorithmic art definitely has a place in making products that are digital experiences,” Surguy said of the connection between his hobby and his work at Amazon.
For example, his Devices team launched a dynamic art feature for Fire TV: a screen saver that created artwork on the fly based on data such as weather, time of day, and other inputs.
Surguy said the ideas he generates outside of work serve as inspiration for what he creates at work, whether it’s creative coding or simply expanding the boundaries of what he makes and how he makes it.
Do you have an out-of-office hobby or interesting side hustle that you’re passionate about that would make for a fun profile on GeekWire? Drop us a line: tips@geekwire.com.
Founded in 2021, Chainguard aims to help customers secure their “software supply chain,” a term used to describe a company’s software production line.
Chainguard focuses on helping companies keep their open source software secure and offers tools to manage container images, a core code component of cloud-based applications. It has more than 200 customers, including ANZ Bank, Canva, GitLab, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, VPBank, and Wiz.
Technically based in Kirkland, Wash., the remote startup employs more than 500 people and has raised $892 million to date as its valuation has risen to $3.5 billion. The company is ranked No. 3 on the GeekWire 200 index of the Pacific Northwest’s top startups, and Chainguard recently landed on LinkedIn’s list of the top 50 startups in the U.S. (at No. 18).
In fiscal year 2025, Chainguard says it grew its annual recurring revenue seven times to $40 million.
CEO and co-founder Dan Lorenc said the funding will help accelerate the adoption of Chainguard across more companies.
“Open source powers the world, but the way it’s delivered and deployed often introduces risk,” Lorenc said in a statement. “At Chainguard, we’re flipping that script: we guard open source from all the things that can go wrong with it, so engineering teams can build anything they want with it.”
Chainguard CFO Eyal Bar said the partnership with General Catalyst enables Chainguard “to scale go-to-market investment without diluting ownership or slowing innovation.”
Instead of using equity to fund sales and marketing spend, General Catalyst provides structured growth capital tied directly to customer acquisition and recurring revenue. The goal is to let startups like Chainguard preserve equity while using outcome-based financing to scale efficiently.
Previous Chainguard investors include Amplify, IVP, Kleiner Perkins, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Mantis VC, Redpoint Ventures, Sequoia Capital, and Spark Capital.
Carbon Robotics founder and CEO Paul Mikesell with the company’s LaserWeeder G2. (Carbon Robotics Photo)
Seattle agriculture-tech startup Carbon Robotics raised $20 million in new funding to support the creation of another piece of AI-powered machinery for farms.
With its signature LaserWeeder and relatively new Autonomous Tractor Kit (ATK) already being used by hundreds of customers, Carbon founder and CEO Paul Mikesell told GeekWire that “a brand new AI robot” is coming.
Mikesell said the machine, which is at least nine months away from being revealed, will leverage the same AI system used in Carbon’s other equipment but perform tasks beyond weeding.
“It’s very flexible, capable of doing a lot with the world around it, understanding what it’s seeing, what’s happening,” Mikesell said of Carbon’s system that uses an array of AI, computer vision and machine learning technology. “We see our ability to reinvest in that platform and double down on what it can do in some new activities.
“It’ll blow your mind,” he added.
Founded in 2018, Carbon Robotics made its name across ag-tech with the LaserWeeder, a machine which can be pulled behind a tractor and uses its tech to detect plants in fields and then target and eliminate weeds with lasers. The latest iteration, the LaserWeeder G2, was released in February.
In March, the company unveiled the Carbon ATK, previously called the AutoTractor. That autonomous platform is designed to fit on and control existing farm equipment and serve as an answer to labor shortages and increased productivity in farming.
Both platforms are continuing to grow and scale, and “things are moving really fast,” according to Mikesell, a longtime technologist and entrepreneur who previously co-founded data storage company Isilon Systems.
LaserWeeders are active on farms across the U.S. and in 14 countries around the world. Mikesell said revenue continues to grow every year, but Carbon is not yet profitable.
Carbon Robotics says it has hundreds of customers across the U.S. and 14 countries. (Carbon Robotics Photo)
Ranked No. 9 on the GeekWire 200 list of top privately held startups based across the Pacific Northwest, Carbon has previously been backed by NVIDIA and Seattle-based Voyager Capital.
The Series D-2 extension round attracted Giant Ventures as lead investor. The UK-based VC invests across a variety of “purpose-driven” startups, and Mikesell said, “They got what we were trying to do.”
Beyond the secretive new machine, Carbon is revealing more about the “large plant model” at the heart of how it does computer vision through its AI systems.
Mikesell said the company is at the point where it has enough training data and labeled images that it can teach its AI to learn about the basic structure of the plants it’s seeing. This allows Carbon to run one model on every machine in the world.
“If new weeds pop up in an onion field in France, and those are eventually going to show up in a carrot field in the U.S., the first time we see that weed anywhere it can be part of the model and be ready to go,” Mikesell said. “It also means that if we want to go into a new crop that we’ve never seen before, we can do it immediately.”
A LaserWeeder is designed to target the meristem of a weed to kill it as quickly as possible and the large plant model helps it understand where to precisely target its zap.
Carbon Robotics, which has raised $177 million to date, now employs about 260 people. The company runs a manufacturing facility in Richland, Wash., and added another in the Netherlands to offset some trade and tariff issues as well as speed deployment of machines in Europe.
Mikesell said as far as competition, there are some companies in Europe who claim to be building some version of a LaserWeeder, but he’s never seen one in a field or competed against one.
“It’s very hard to create a LaserWeeder,” he said. “The targeting system is so special, and the AI is so special. It’s not just about detecting where the weeds are. The trick to making it work is you need a targeting camera to be able to keep the lasers on target [while moving], and everybody I’ve seen that says they’re gonna build a LaserWeeder doesn’t understand that concept.”
Seattle-based Hest makes mattresses, pillows, bedding and more for car and tent campers. (Hest Photo)
Hest, the Seattle-based maker of sleeping gear for outdoor enthusiasts, raised $2.7 million in Series A funding this month as the company sees continued growth.
The initial close was backed by existing investors — Ascend, Cascade Seed Fund, Alliance of Angels, and a number of Seattle-area angel investors — and Hest is opening the round to new investors with a final close later this year.
Founder and CEO Aaron Ambuske told GeekWire that Hest continues to experience significant growth with a 50% increase in sales this year. The startup expects to turn an operating profit for the first time.
Hest founder and CEO Aaron Ambuske. (Photo via Ascend.vc)
Ambuske said the growth is driven by an expanded product line and an increase in sales at REI, where Hest is now in all stores. The company also has a partnership with electric vehicle maker Rivian.
The fresh cash will be used to support future growth opportunities.
“We are launching a new product category in 2026, expanding our partnership with Rivian and investing in new sales channels,” Ambuske said. “We recently launched in Japan and will continue to explore international options when they are a fit.”
He added that while tariffs imposed by the Trump administration “have been a lot to navigate,” over half of Hest’s cost of goods and final assembly are in the U.S., so the company has been “slightly insulated from the turbulence.”
Ambuske, who spent 18 years at K2 Sports, launched Hest in 2019 to satisfy his desire to bring a more comfortable sleeping experience to car and tent campers.
Based in Seattle’s Georgetown neighborhood, Hest opened its first showroom this summer. The company employs 10 people.
Members of the Silkline team in Seattle, from left: Pearce Burkett, founding account executive; David Tomczyk, founding engineer; Brent Shulman, co-founder and CTO; Isaac Chambers, co-founder and CEO; Jack Zeiders, founding engineer. (Silkline Photo)
Silkline, a Seattle startup using AI to help advanced manufacturing companies manage their supply chains, raised $4 million in seed funding, the company announced Wednesday.
Founded in 2023, Silkline aims to reduce production delays by simplifying and lowering the cost of sourcing materials from multiple suppliers. AI-enabled requests for quotes and purchase orders are among its recently released features.
The fresh cash will help Silkline accelerate its development of AI-powered capabilities.
Silkline customers include manufacturers in aerospace, energy, defense and robotics, including Starfish Space (Tukwila) and Portal Space (Bothell), as well as Vast, Castelion, H3X, K2 Space, Antares Industries, and Machina Labs.
In July, Silkline projected it would triple revenue in 2025. Since then, the company says revenue has grown fivefold year-over-year.
The company says its growth is being driven in part by a “network effect,” in which 20% of new customers are suppliers who received an RFQ generated by the Silkline platform.
“Supply chain teams in advanced manufacturing are struggling with missed production deadlines, RFQ to order management, and increasing demands from their customers,” Isaac Chambers, co-founder and CEO of Silkline, said in a statement. “This round of funding helps Silkline deliver more AI capabilities and reach further into the advanced manufacturing market so all modern hardware companies can experience a fully connected supply chain.”
Silkline currently employs five people.
The funding round was led by Origin Ventures with participation from Forward Deployed VC, 25madison, Matchstick Ventures, Barrel Ventures, and Plow Ventures.
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