Amazon
paid an estimated $1.8 billion last year to
Blue Origin
, the space venture owned by its founder and executive chair Jeff Bezos, nearly triple the year before. The increase came as the company ramped up its Amazon Leo satellite buildout. 

• A shareholder proposal is pushing for a mandatory independent board chair, calling Bezos’ expanding outside interests — including Blue Origin and AI startup Project Prometheus — potential conflicts of interest. Read more.

From rocket science to the power grid:
Helion
Energy CEO

David Kirtley

transitioned from developing plasma-based rocket propulsion for starships to applying that same technology to create a faster path toward commercial nuclear fusion. 

• Everett, Wash.-based Helion is now racing to complete a first-of-its-kind power plant in Washington state, aiming to provide clean, carbon-free electricity to the grid by 2028. 
• We caught up with Kirtley to discuss lessons he learned from space technologies, leading in the face of fusion skepticism, and more. Read the interview. 

AI bots do a lot of the heavy lifting for Fetchlist, a Portland startup that helps online marketplace shoppers by acting as an intermediary and delivery service. Founder

Taylor Marean

is bootstrapping the venture, paying $100 a month for
Anthropic
’s Claude Pro to get Fetchlist up and running. 

• “It’s insane what can be done now by one person,” he said. “I feel like I have a whole team working for me, because I have a bunch of bots that literally work 24 hours a day, seven days a week.” Read more.

Hot Links:

• Seattle-based
  Hubble Network
  and
  InPlay Inc
  have partnered to offer a global tracking solution that uses affordable Bluetooth chips to monitor items via satellite, bypassing the need for traditional RFID. (Hubble Network)
• Remitly
  , the Seattle digital remittance company, launched an app in ChatGPT, allowing customers to explore exchange rates and compare delivery options for international money transfers without leaving
  OpenAI
  ’s platform. (Remitly)
• Seattle-based RFID company
  Impinj
  says its upgraded R700 reader features autonomous reading capabilities to process data directly on the device for faster item tracking in complex environments. (Impinj)
• Billionaire philanthropist Connie Ballmer, wife of former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, gave $80 million to
  NPR
  , the largest gift by a living donor in the organization’s history. (The Seattle Times)
• Amazon’s internal AI boom is creating a classic “sprawl” problem — more tools, more duplicated data, and less centralized control — and the company is now exploring using AI to clean up the mess. (Business Insider)

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