Blue Origin launch success | Cruise layoffs hit Seattle-area office

Blue Origin successfully launched its New Shepard rocket ship on its first suborbital trip to space in more than a year, boosting confidence that Jeff Bezos' venture will resume crewed flights in the new year. Tuesday’s mission from West Texas carried 33 science payloads in the crew capsule. Read more.

Cruise layoffs hit Bellevue office: The self-driving technology company is laying off 67 employees at its Seattle-area engineering hub, according to a new state filing, part of widespread cuts at the GM-backed firm. Read more. 

Attorney General Bob Ferguson is proposing legislation to create a bipartisan Artificial Intelligence Task Force in Washington state that would recommend principles for AI use, identify potential high-risk uses of AI, and raise other policy issues for state legislators to consider. Read more.

Heads up, startup founders and small business owners: If your company has 20 or fewer full-time employees and gross annual sales of less than $5 million, there’s a new federal filing requirement that you need to know about. Read more.

Tech Moves: Ex-Google leaders Frances Perry and Margaret Lawrence Rosas are joining Seattle startup MotherDuck; Pallavi Sinha lands at Humanly as vice president of growth; Tacoma Venture Fund hires Madin Akpo-Esambe; and more key personnel changes.

Hot Links:

• As Bill Gates looks ahead to 2024 and the future, AI figures heavily in his optimism about how innovation will fuel progress. (Gates Notes) 

• Amazon will not renew its lease for roughly 209,000 square feet in the 1800 Ninth tower in downtown Seattle, where it’s been since 2013. (Puget Sound Business Journal)

• After a year of trying to lure people back to a post-pandemic downtown, some things are going right in Seattle and some still need fixing. (Crosscut)

• Amazon product review summaries created by generative AI are exaggerating negative feedback or mischaracterizing products, according to some sellers. (Bloomberg)