Photos from a sweet party at the GeekWire Gala

That was one sweet party! Our annual holiday celebration for the tech community was a festive, candy-themed affair at Showbox SoDo on Thursday night. More than 700 people turned out for a night of networking and partying, with good food, drinks, music, and much more. Check out all the highlights and photos from the GeekWire Gala.

Stoke Space successfully hotfired one of its rocket engines on a new vertical test stand at the company’s Moses Lake, Wash., facility, in what co-founder Tom Feldman called “a very big deal” for the 4-year-old startup. Read more.

Modern Hydrogen, a Bill Gates-backed startup based in the Seattle region, raised $25 million for its clean tech hydrogen production systems. Read more.

Amazon plans to donate $1 million to President-elect Donald Trump’s inaugural fund and livestream his inauguration next month on Prime Video. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is also reportedly planning to meet with Trump next week at his Mar-a-Lago club. Read more.

• Related: Bezos 'very optimistic' about Trump's return to office

Martin Selig Real Estate, a prominent Seattle office developer, is warning lenders that it won’t be able to pay off a $379 million loan tied to nine properties in and around downtown Seattle, according to Bloomberg.

• Related: Bellevue real estate brokers bullish about Amazon’s new return-to-office policy as Microsoft moves out

Hot Links:

• Amazon workers at a unionized warehouse in New York City voted to authorize a strike. (ABC News)

• Microsoft released Phi-4, the latest version of its small language model. (TechCrunch)

• Anthropic’s Claude has emerged as the “chatbot of choice for a crowd of savvy tech insiders.” (New York Times) 

• Box CEO Aaron Levie on why AI agents controlling browsers and computers is a big deal for enterprise workflows. (LinkedIn)

• Longtime Seattle tech exec Christy Johnson discusses reimagining workplace flexibility and supporting women in business leadership. (Shift AI via YouTube)

• Denzel Washington doesn’t have a LinkedIn, but he does have a Cadillac, the actor joked while discussing how he’s glad social media was never a part of his life. (TikTok)

Thanks for subscribing to the GeekWire newsletter, and have a great weekend. — GeekWire editor Taylor Soper, taylor@geekwire.com; and GeekWire reporter Kurt Schlosser, kurt@geekwire.com.