UW prevails in lawsuit filed by developer that lost bid to build new clean energy facility

The University of Washington prevailed in a lawsuit filed by a prominent life sciences developer that lost in a bid to build a new clean energy research facility.

• Alexandria Real Estate Equities filed three claims against the UW after the school chose another company to develop W27 (above) as a “gateway” building in a high-profile area of UW’s Seattle campus. Read more.

Shares of Neolukin Therapeutics spiked after the Seattle biotech company announced it was slashing jobs and seeking a potential merger or sale.

• Neoleukin incubated at the UW’s Institute for Protein Design and merged with another biotech company to go public in August 2019. Read more.

Seattle-area transit agency King County Metro launched a new app-based on-demand ride service for public transit users that costs the same as a bus fare.

• Metro Flex is a partnership with transit tech company Via. It’s providing mini-van rides in areas lacking sufficient routes on buses and light rail to boost first- and last-mile options. Read more. 

Tech Moves:

• Former Expedia leader joins Peerspace; longtime Amazon exec departs for Flexport; another Amazon exec joins Acertus; and more personnel changes.

Microsoft’s Bing search engine reached a new milestone: 100 million daily active users.

• In a blog post, the company said its recently released AI-powered chatbot tool is helping attract new users to Bing. Microsoft is still far behind Google, which counts more than 1 billion daily active users.

Are you flying Alaska Airlines anytime soon? 

• Be sure to check out the latest season of GeekWire's Elevator Pitch on the inflight entertainment.