GeekWire Field Trip: Starbucks rebounds, Microsoft slides, and Amazon resets
GeekWire
GeekWire
4.8 • 127 Ratings
🗓️ 31 January 2026
⏱️ 27 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Upcoming GeekWire Podcast Live Event: Join us from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. Thursday, Feb 12 at Fremont Brewing for a live recording of the GeekWire Podcast with Todd Bishop and John Cook. Free for Fremont Chamber members, $15 for everyone else. Register here.
This week on the show, Todd Bishop and Taylor Soper hit the road for a driving tour of the news, making stops at Starbucks, Microsoft, and an Amazon Fresh store in its final days.
First up, Starbucks reports its first U.S. transaction growth in about two years — and announces plans for an AI "ordering companion" that translates cravings into custom drinks. Todd tests it the old-fashioned way, ordering a banana bread latte at the drive-through.
Then, Microsoft beats quarterly expectations but sees its stock drop 12% in a single day. The culprit? Investor concerns about the company's exposure to OpenAI, which now accounts for roughly 45% of Microsoft's contracted future cloud revenue.
Finally, Amazon is closing all of its Fresh grocery stores and Go convenience stores in the U.S., exiting its homegrown retail formats entirely. Todd and Taylor visit a Seattle location during its clearance sale, and find a long line at a store whose original promise was no lines at all.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi and welcome to Geekwire. I'm Geekwire co-founder Todd Bishop. |
| 0:05.3 | And I'm Geekwire editor, Taylor Soper. |
| 0:07.1 | We are going to be giving you a driving tour of the news this week. |
| 0:11.5 | There were big headlines from Amazon. |
| 0:14.0 | Somebody's honking. |
| 0:16.4 | This is for real, folks. |
| 0:18.3 | There were big headlines from Amazon, Microsoft, and Starbucks this week. |
| 0:22.4 | And as it happened, Taylor and I were headed over to the Microsoft campus. |
| 0:25.5 | I'm actually really excited, Taylor. |
| 0:27.2 | This is going to be the first time I will have been in the Microsoft building where all the executives are, the new one. |
| 0:33.2 | Not the old one, the new one. |
| 0:34.6 | So we're headed there. |
| 0:35.8 | But first, I wanted to go to a Starbucks |
| 0:39.3 | because there is in fact a very interesting piece of news that came out this past week. |
| 0:45.3 | And I have a very specific order that I want to make. And so that's coming up next. I'm excited about this. |
| 0:52.3 | Can't wait to hear what it is. |
| 0:57.4 | And then later on, we are going to be in a grocery store as well. |
| 0:59.4 | And trust me, all of it relates to the news. |
| 1:00.4 | Stick around. |
| 1:03.5 | We'll be back with more on Geekwire right after this. |
| 1:15.1 | Before we begin, a quick note to let you know that we've got a special Geekwire podcast event coming up, a live recording of the show Thursday, February 12th at 4 p.m. at Fremont Brewing in Seattle's |
| 1:23.1 | Fremont neighborhood. That's Seattle's Fremont neighborhood, not Fremont, California, just to be clear. |
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