Testing Amazon’s new AI shopping assistant | PSL spinout raises $3M to use AI for hardware development

Will AI change how we shop online? Amazon’s new Rufus artificial intelligence shopping assistant is, at turns, truly impressive and mildly disappointing, based on GeekWire’s experience with the beta in the Amazon app over the past few days. Overall, the technology left us impressed with the potential for AI to make it easier to be a savvy shopper. Read more.

AI for hardware development: Enzzo, a new Seattle startup that spun out of Pioneer Square Labs, just raised $3 million to help companies supercharge the early stages of product creation. Read more.

Peggy Johnson, the former Microsoft executive who stepped down as Magic Leap CEO last fall, is the new CEO of Agility Robotics, the Corvalis, Ore.-based company backed by Amazon and known for the Digit bipedal humanoid warehouse robot. Read more.

• Related story from Bloomberg: Humanoid Robots at Amazon Provide Glimpse of an Automated Workplace

Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture is aiming to send an uncrewed lander to the surface of the moon in the next 12 to 16 months. Read more.

Back on Earth, Bezos just passed Elon Musk as the richest person in the world with a net worth of $200.3 billion. Read more.

Glowforge released another low-priced 3D laser engraver called the Spark. Priced at $699, the machine comes less than a year after the $1,200 Aura, which was designed to attract more home crafting enthusiasts. Read more.

Seattle peer-to-peer laundry startup Loopie acquired Bidbud, a Tacoma, Wash.-based gig economy platform that allows clients to post job opportunities that can be bid on by freelancers and service providers. Read more.

Fighting cow burp methane: Seattle biotech startup Phase Genomics is receiving $1.5 million from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to fund research into two important areas: killing drug-resistant bacteria and battling methane-producing microorganisms that live in the guts of cows and other ruminants. Read more.

• Google is giving up office space in Seattle’s Fremont neighborhood. (Puget Sound Business Journal)

• Nintendo won a legal fight against a Nintendo Switch emulator. (The Verge) 

• Oregon is the latest state to pass a right-to-repair bill, which makes it easier for consumers to fix their devices. (Ars Technica)

• Some of Seattle’s double-decker electric buses will be charged wirelessly. (Axios)

• Bill Catterall, a University of Washington professor and pioneer in the research of electrical signals in living cells, passed away at the age of 77. (UW Medicine)