Qualtrics cuts 14% of workforce | Amazon’s secret pricing algorithm | Latest PNW startup funding trends

Qualtrics layoffs: The privately held experience-management software company, co-headquartered in Provo, Utah, and Seattle, will lay off 780 employees, or about 14% of its workforce. Qualtrics employs about 900 people in Seattle. Its downtown office will remain in operation after the layoffs, according to the company. Read the memo from CEO Zig Serafin.  

In search of Project Nessie: Is Amazon’s secret pricing algorithm a monster or myth? The FTC alleges that “Project Nessie,” which emerged from the inky black in last week’s antitrust suit, tested the impact of Amazon’s product price increases on the retail market, ultimately inflating prices, the Wall Street Journal reports. Amazon says the FTC is hallucinating. Read more.

Latest PNW funding data: Pacific Northwest startups raised $920 million in the third quarter — a 46% drop compared to the same period last year. Read more. 

Startup has a weapon to destroy “forever chemicals”: Tacoma, Wash.-based Aquagga has successfully deployed a system — inside a 10-foot shipping container (above) — that slashes the lifespan of PFAS. The chemicals are added to such things as food packaging, water-repellent clothing and non-stick pans, but they also can contaminate drinking water and have raised concerns about serious health impacts. Read more.

New startup news:

• Rethinking PR: Longtime Seattle entrepreneur David Niu is taking lessons learned from his past startups to help guide a new endeavor that aims to help companies land media coverage. 

• Another AI company in Seattle: Former ZoomInfo exec Arjun Pillai raised fresh cash for Docket, which uses AI to boost how account executives do their jobs.

“All partnerships are tactical. There is no such thing as a strategic partnership.” That’s one of the lessons that former Microsoft exec Bob Muglia tells the companies he works with these days, and he says it helps to explain the unlikely partnership announced recently by Microsoft’s Satya Nadella and Oracle’s Larry Ellison (above) in the cloud database market — a slice of the industry that Muglia knows a thing or two about. Read more.

AI gets real at the GeekWire Summit: We just released a sneak preview of the agenda for the upcoming GeekWire Summit, held Oct. 19 at the former Cinerama in Seattle. Check out the schedule, and register here to attend. 

Hot Links:

• Got a package to return? Uber will now pick up and take items to UPS, FedEx or USPS for a flat fee through its apps. (CNBC)

• Amazon-owned Ring is searching for UFOs, and is offering $1 million to a U.S. resident who captures unaltered video proof of extraterrestrials. (Ring blog)

• Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott talks Bing growth, acquiring GPUs, and the future of art in an age of AI. (The Verge)