There’s a new No. 1.
Fusion power company Helion Energy has taken the top spot in the latest update of the GeekWire 200, our quarterly ranking of the top privately held technology startups in the Pacific Northwest.
Helion replaced Highspot, which announced a merger with Seismic in a significant sales software deal last month (exited companies graduate from the list). Backed by the likes of SoftBank and Sam Altman, Helion announced two key milestones in February on its mission to generate usable energy from fusion reactions.
The company’s ascent atop the GeekWire 200 reflects a broader trend on the rankings, as startups building complex hardware across sectors like space, energy, robotics, and agriculture make up a sizable chunk of the list. It’s a notable change for a region traditionally dominated by enterprise software.
The top 10 includes companies such as Agility Robotics, which is building humanoid robots; Brinc, a drone maker serving public safety customers; Stoke Space, a space manufacturing company; and Carbon Robotics, which sells weed-zapping machines to farmers. Seattle VC firm Ascend has coined this crop of companies as “Cascadian Dynamism.”
The GeekWire 200 is a great resource to help keep track of the region’s up-and-coming companies, along with established leaders.
The list, which dates to 2013, combines objective data and editorial insight to provide a broad view of the region’s startup landscape. The GeekWire 200 has long served as a resource for investors, job seekers, service providers, and others tracking the Pacific Northwest tech scene.
Here’s the new top 10.
Top 10 Companies: Q1 2026
The top 10 includes one new member: infrastructure startup Temporal, now valued at $5 billion after raising a $300 million Series D round last month. Temporal’s revenue grew more than 380% year-over-year as it helps companies move their AI agents into real-world production.
Several other startups rose up the list this quarter:
- Auger, the supply chain software startup that raised a $100 million seed round in 2024, continues to hire rapidly — headcount is up more than 200% year-over-year — and is now ranked No. 41. Auger also announced a partnership with Microsoft on Wednesday.
- Echodyne, the Seattle-area radar platform company, announced plans to build a new manufacturing facility in Washington state and moved up to No. 54.
- Starfish Space is now No. 64 after landing a $54.5 million Space Force contract for its satellite servicing spacecraft.
- AIM Intelligent Machines, the autonomous construction startup that recently inked its own government contract, moved up to No. 122.
- Avalanche Energy, which announced a $29 million round last month to fuel its fusion technology, moved up to No. 156.
- Tin Can, the hot Seattle startup behind a landline-style telephone for kids, sprang to No. 167 after raising $12 million in December.
There are also a batch of newcomers making their debut on the list, including:
- Tune Therapeutics (No. 140), a biotech company co-headquartered in Seattle that’s developing epigenome editing programs.
- Gradial (No. 151), a Seattle-based startup developing agentic marketing tools that raised $35 million in December and recently launched a new tool for GEO, or Generative Engine Optimization.
- Starcloud (No. 171), the Redmond, Wash.-based company working on space-based data centers that was featured during Jensen Huang’s keynote at NVIDIA GTC this week.
- Others new entrants include Union.ai; Integrate; Clearly AI; mpathic; AheadComputing; Casium; RentSpree; Inflection.io; Dopl Technologies; Loopr; Scala; Elevāt; Certivo; AZX; and MontyCloud.
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.
- GeekWire 200 survey: CEOs cautious about hiring as AI boosts productivity for Seattle startups
- How AI is transforming Seattle-area startups: Insights from GeekWire 200 CEOs
The rankings have evolved over time, and last year we made some key changes.
- 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.
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. Email us at tips@geekwire.com with any questions.
https://ift.tt/YNOLjly March 18, 2026 at 05:00PM GeekWire
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