Seattle startups raise capital and get acquired

Seattle-area startups have been drawing capital and getting acquired in a series of deals across AI infrastructure, enterprise software and travel technology. The deals range from a $550 million round for Bellevue's Temporal to Databricks' purchase of spreadsheet startup Row Zero and Booking Holdings' new AI travel venture in the city.

Zoom bought Seattle sales intelligence startup Common Room in July to give its sales products details about possible buyers, Crunchbase News reported on Sept. 15. The deal was part of a broader pattern of larger companies buying specialized sales and marketing software, Crunchbase data showed.

On Sept. 14, Temporal, a microservices orchestration company based in Bellevue, Wash., raised $550 million in a Series E round at a $12.55 billion valuation, according to Axios. Lightspeed led the financing, with Wellington, Goldman Sachs, Tiger Global, T. Rowe Price, SV Angel, Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital, Index Ventures, Sapphire Ventures, GIC and Amplify also participating. Axios also reported that day that Nuance Labs, a Seattle startup working to make AI conversations more human, raised $50 million in Series A funding led by Lightspeed, with Accel, South Park Commons, Nvidia and Define Ventures joining.

On Sept. 24, Databricks said it had bought Row Zero, a Seattle company that makes high-performance spreadsheet software for huge enterprise datasets, GeekWire reported. Databricks intends to fold Row Zero into its platform and Genie AI assistant so non-technical teams can use a spreadsheet-style interface to analyze datasets without leaving their data environment. Row Zero brought in $10 million in a Series A round last year. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

On Oct. 6, Bellevue's Temporal acquired Oso, an AI cybersecurity startup, the Puget Sound Business Journal reported. The acquisition came just weeks after Temporal raised its $550 million Series E round, according to the Business Journal.

On Oct. 14, Booking Holdings said it is creating a new AI travel company called Vayo in Seattle, headed by longtime Seattle entrepreneur Mike Fridgen, and intends to put in $100 million as the venture progresses, according to a GeekWire report published on LinkedIn. The startup's AI agents gather flight, hotel and restaurant confirmations from a user's email, then keep an eye out for price drops and other changes. Vayo considers general-purpose AI agents like Meta's Muse to be its chief rival, wagering that agents designed only for travel will perform better.

Taken together, the deals show Seattle's startup base is active in AI infrastructure, enterprise software and travel technology, with both large funding rounds and acquisitions.