The GeekWire 200, our quarterly ranking of the top privately held technology startups in Seattle and the Pacific Northwest, has a new look and a revamped approach — designed to spotlight a wider array of up-and-coming companies alongside the region’s established startup leaders.
Presented by JPMorganChase, the GeekWire 200 combines objective data and editorial insight to provide a broad view of the region’s startup landscape. The ranking, which dates to 2013, has long served as a resource for investors, job seekers, service providers, and others tracking the Pacific Northwest tech scene.
With this Q2 2025 update, we’ve started changing the way we calculate the ranking, with help from AI tools. Part of the goal is to do justice to fast-growing startups — including small teams making a big impact. It reflects a growing trend of startups punching above their weight, leveraging artificial intelligence.
Here’s the new top 10. See the full GeekWire 200 ranking here.
1
1,047
Employees
+11%
1-Yr Growth
3
491
Employees
+199%
1-Yr Growth
5
158
Employees
+61%
1-Yr Growth
6
412
Employees
-3%
1-Yr Growth
8
270
Employees
+13%
1-Yr Growth
9
635
Employees
+8%
1-Yr Growth
10
227
Employees
+41%
1-Yr Growth
Several companies joined the list for the first time.
- Nectar Social (No. 175), a social commerce startup that raised $10.6 million earlier this month.
- Elastix (No. 187), an AI inference platform that emerged from stealth in May.
- Vercept (No. 176), which is working on a new computer interface system and raised a $16 million seed round.
- EdgeRunner AI (No. 165), a startup building technology to help military members use generative AI.
And several established startups made notable moves list since our Q1 update.
- Statsig jumped to No. 5 after the developer tools startup raised $100 million at a $1.1 billion valuation in May.
- Overland AI moved to No. 15 on the heels of the military tech company’s new autonomous vehicle release and the opening of a Seattle factory.
- Crypto startup Eigen Labs (No. 78), legal tech firm Supio (No. 80), and solar power servicing company Omnidian (No. 37) also improved their rankings after raising new funding (see our funding database here).
How the rankings have evolved
The revamp is a work in progress, and it will continue to evolve in future quarterly updates. Here’s how we’re changing our approach.
- We’re looking at each company’s employee growth over the past 12 months, factoring in both the percentage increase and the number of jobs added.
- Larger companies still earn credit for maintaining scale — a sign of maturity and customer traction. But this is weighted less heavily than growth, to help spotlight emerging players.
- We include LinkedIn follower counts as a rough measure of a company’s public traction. To avoid favoring long-established firms, we apply a curve that gives younger companies a fairer shot.
- And as in the past, we take into account editorial judgment from the GeekWire news team, based on factors including recent fundings and layoffs, and our own insights from covering the region’s tech startups.
- Companies founded 15 years ago or later “graduate” from the GeekWire 200, and are not included. We also remove companies due to mergers, acquisitions and private equity deals in which they sell a majority of their shares.
How we used AI in this update
We used Claude, Gemini, and ChatGPT to help aggregate data, generate the rankings, and verify the accuracy of the data.
For future updates, we’re experimenting with an AI-powered “Innovation Score” that will factor in recent launches and breakthroughs in areas such as AI, enterprise tech, space, robotics, and biotech. We’d welcome your ideas for further improvements and new data sources: newsteam@geekwire.com.
We also refreshed the design of the GeekWire 200, making it easier to:
- Sort the list by different metrics
- Search for specific startups
- Explore related GeekWire coverage
In a first for us, this new interface was built by a non-developer on the GeekWire team using Claude and ChatGPT (and reviewed by a developer before going live).
Notes on the GeekWire 200
Our list is not scientific, by any means, and the specific rankings should be taken with a grain of salt. But it has proven to be a highly useful tool. We hear regularly from readers who use the GeekWire 200 to look for jobs, prospect for customers, mine for potential investments, and get a high-level view of the tech community.
We also use the list as a valuable insights tool, gathering survey data to highlight trends among fast-growing startups.
To make sure your Pacific Northwest technology startup is eligible for the GeekWire 200, first confirm it’s included in the broader GeekWire Startup List. If so, there’s no need to submit it separately. If your startup isn’t among the companies on that larger list, you can submit it for inclusion here, and we’ll crunch the numbers to see if your company makes the next GeekWire 200 update.
Source: Geek Wire
