Windows keyboard is getting an AI button | Amazon shuts down last Fresh Pickup location

The Windows keyboard is getting an AI button. Microsoft and PC makers will add a “Copilot” key to the keyboard on Windows laptops and devices to let users quickly invoke the company’s “Copilot for Windows” artificial intelligence technology. 

• Microsoft describes it as the biggest change to the standard keyboard layout since the Windows logo was added nearly 30 years ago to launch the Start menu. 

• The move illustrates one of the advantages that Microsoft’s widely used operating system gives the company as it competes with the likes of Google, Amazon, Anthropic, and others to establish a beachhead for its AI technologies.

• It will start appearing on new Windows devices set to be unveiled in conjunction with the upcoming CES consumer electronics trade show in Las Vegas. Read more.

The University of Washington this year expects to break ground on a new building that will anchor an ambitious, innovation-focused redevelopment called Portage Bay Crossing. 

• The project will cover 69 acres of the southwest portion of the Seattle campus, revitalizing and unifying an area of buildings that officials called old and underutilized. 

• CoMotion, the UW’s innovation arm, earlier this year relocated to a building within Portage Bay Crossing. The move bolstered a hub of entrepreneurship known as Startup Hall, which was already home to CoMotion Labs incubator, Techstars Seattle and Seattle venture capital firm Founders’ Co-op.

• "The intellectual work that will occur inside these buildings, and inside this space, we hope will solve some of the nation’s and the world’s biggest problems,” said Randy Hodgins, UW vice president for external affairs. Read more.

Amazon closed the last of two Fresh Pickup locations in Seattle, marking the end of another effort by the tech giant to disrupt how and where people get their groceries. The location at the base of the Starbucks headquarters building in SoDo closed in December, almost a year after the Ballard location. Read more.

Hot Links:

• Seattle biotech startup Umoja Biopharma inked a deal worth up to $1.4 billion with AbbVie to leverage Umoja’s gene delivery platform. (Umoja) 

• The Biden Administration approved $162 million in federal funding that will boost a chip production factory in the Portland, Ore., area. (The Hill) 

• Amazon is financing a new low-income housing project in South Seattle. (Puget Sound Business Journal)

• Seattle VC firm Ascend shared a guide for requesting “warm intros” from investors. (Ascend)

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