Top: Center for an Informed Public co-founder Kate Starbird speaking at a University of Washington lecture. Bottom: AI House managing director Jifan Zhang and an AI House event. (CIP and GeekWire Photos)
Each year, the GeekWire Awards celebrate the geeky endeavors making a meaningful impact across the Pacific Northwest. This year’s Geeks Give Back honorees are building community and sharing knowledge — one focused on advancing AI innovation, the other on education and research in our rapidly evolving media landscape.
The honorees are AI House, a first-in-the-nation hub fostering collaboration in the burgeoning AI sector, and the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public (CIP), which provides programs that teach everyone from students to seniors how to identify rumors and misinformation.
The GeekWire Awards will recognize nearly 50 finalists and honorees across a dozen categories, from Startup of the Year to Next Tech Titan. Geeks Give Back honorees are selected through community nominations and input from awards judges.
Geeks Give Back is presented again this year by BECU.
Winners will receive their coveted robot trophies live onstage on May 7 at Showbox SoDo in Seattle. Individual tickets are on sale now — grab a seat here — and keep reading to learn more about this year’s Geeks Give Back honorees.
AI House
In addition to events, AI House has 1,000 desks for tech workers. (GeekWire Photo / Kurt Schlosser)
Since launching a little more than a year ago, AI House has hosted more than 150 events at its collaborative space at Seattle’s Pier 70. The 108,000-square-foot waterfront facility brings together entrepreneurs, investors, students and community leaders to foster big ideas and forge connections in the pursuit of AI innovation.
The initiative launched out of AI2 Incubator, a startup organization and venture firm, and offers co-working space for companies, including those affiliated with the incubator.
The AI House calendar features events ranging from monthly Pitch Please gatherings, which have led to AI2 Incubator investments, to conversations with prominent leaders. The organization has also created affinity groups for female founders, founder mental health and B2C founders.
Yifan Zhang, managing director of AI House, says she regularly meets people who are new to the Seattle startup scene — whether they recently moved or graduated, have been building independently, or left Big Tech and are curious about the startup world.
“They’re often astonished and thrilled to land at a place like AI House while starting their explorations,” Zhang said. “This matters because in order for Seattle’s startup scene to succeed, we need it to be much much bigger than it is today. Our thesis is that AI House can be that ‘big tent.’”
Her goal is that everyone who visits leaves having met someone new and gained a perspective they hadn’t considered before — one that opens new possibilities in their entrepreneurial pursuits.
Center for an Informed Public (CIP)
CIP manager Liz Crouse, left, speaks with Ballard High School teacher Shawn Lee, at CIP’s MisinfoDay 2026. (UW Information School / Doug Parry)
When the UW’s Center for an Informed Public launched in 2019 with a $5 million grant, the central concerns were misinformation threatening upcoming elections and social media’s role in igniting rumors. CIP set out to better understand the sources of false information and map how it spreads, and to educate the public on how to recognize and guard against it.
More than six years later, information untethered from facts permeates social media, influencer posts, and many news outlets. Generative AI tools that fabricate images and videos — and help users craft deceptive, persuasive messages — continue to proliferate.
In response, CIP is expanding its efforts: connecting professors across disciplines, hosting high school students, librarians and teachers, and equipping people with the tools they need to make sense of modern life.
“The CIP is an organization that’s fundamentally about research and knowledge production, but really in service of the communities locally around the campus, and across the state, across the nation, across the world,” said Emma Spiro, CIPs’ faculty director and UW Information School associate professor.
Recent highlights include the launch of a free online humanities course titled “Modern-Day Oracles or Bullshit Machines?” examining AI use; co-hosting an intergenerational AI event with high school students and seniors; and webinars such as “Understanding and Navigating Political Divides” and “Preparing Informed Citizens in an AI-Powered World.”
Spiro credits the people involved with CIP for its impact. “We’ve been really successful at finding those mission-aligned, values-driven people who are invested in the mission and willing to take on what can be sometimes controversial work,” she said.
Astound Business Solutions is the presenting sponsor of the 2026 GeekWire Awards. Thanks also to gold sponsors Amazon Sustainability, Baird, BECU, JLL, First Tech and Wilson Sonsini, and silver sponsors Prime Team Partners.
