'Tableau has been killed by Salesforce' | Submit nominations for GeekWire Awards

On an otherwise run-of-the-mill weeknight at Fremont Brewing near Lake Union in Seattle, the line for beer stretched past the front doors and into the outdoor seating area.

• The reason: A group of past and current Tableau Software employees gathered last week to reflect on Tableau’s 19-year journey, more than three years after the data visualization technology company was acquired by San Francisco-based Salesforce for $15.7 billion. The event, just down the street from Tableau’s Seattle headquarters, was described as an Irish wake, the traditional rite of mourning in which family and friends celebrate the life of the deceased. Read the story. (Above, a group of Tableau employees huddle over a binder with faces and descriptions of current and past workers.)

Walmart is consolidating its tech office real estate footprint and closing hubs in three cities, but said “Seattle remains core to its location strategy.”

• The retail giant established a tech presence in the region in 2021 and said last year that it would add nearly 200 jobs in the area. Read more. 

Rob Saka, an associate general counsel at Meta, is running for Seattle City Council, where he hopes to forge more public-private partnerships to address some of the city’s problems.

• A University of Washington graduate and Air Force Veteran, Saka was previously an in-house lawyer at Microsoft. Read the GeekWire Q&A.

Flyhomes is broadening its suite of home-buying tools by acquiring the host-to-own platform Loftium in a Seattle startup real estate deal.

• The acquisition comes at a time when the broader real estate market has been in flux due in part to rising interest rates. Read more. 

Beyond rockets and space stations, Blue Origin is getting down and dirty in other ways related space, turning moon soil into electricity-producing solar cells.

• The Jeff Bezos space venture says it can make power systems on the lunar surface directly from materials that exist there. Read more.

The Redmond, Wash., Police Department is trying a new tactic to avoid dangerous high-speed car chases and catch up to suspects after they stop.

• A technology called StarChase uses a high-powered compressor mounted on a police car to fire a GPS tracker, coated in industrial-strength adhesive, at a fleeing vehicle. Read more. 

Seattle-based customer intelligence startup Amperity laid off workers for the second time in a year as part of a restructuring of its business.

• The company, which had 375 employees at the time of its last layoff in August, said 10% of the workforce was let go. Read more.

Submit your nominations for the 2023 GeekWire Awards.

• Help us celebrate the top innovators, entrepreneurs and technology leaders in the Pacific Northwest on May 18 in Seattle. Make nominations now for Startup of the Year, Workplace of the Year, Next Tech Titan and more. Details here.

Thanks for reading, and have a great day. — GeekWire managing editor Taylor Soper, taylor@geekwire.com, and GeekWire reporter Kurt Schlosser, kurt@geekwire.com.