Microsoft political donations: The tech giant’s Political Action Committee (PAC) will suspend contributions for the 2022 election cycle to all members of Congress who voted against certifying results of the U.S. presidential election, and to all “state officials and organizations who supported such objections or suggested the election should be overturned.” It’s one of several steps announced by the company Friday morning, two weeks after the leak of internal comments in which Microsoft President Brad Smith (above) spoke candidly about the company’s use of campaign contributions to build beneficial relationships with politicians.
Andy Jassy’s biggest Amazon challenge: The current Amazon Web Services chief will have plenty to take on as Amazon’s soon-to-be CEO. The biggest hurdle could be dealing with AWS customers in retail, healthcare, finance and a host of other industries who are fearful that Amazon is going to enter their markets. That’s the takeaway from Orion Hindawi, co-founder and CEO of fast-growing cybersecurity company Tanium. Read more.
Related: A dispute between Elastic and AWS highlights the ongoing battle over open source business model. Read more.
T-Mobile beats Q4 earnings: The Bellevue, Wash.-based wireless carrier posted revenue of $20.3 billion and said customer growth also exceeded expectations as it added a net total of 1.7 million in the quarter, topping Verizon and AT&T. T-Mobile now has 102 million total customers. Read more.
NFL passes on Brady and Gronk ad: T-Mobile’s attempt at poking fun at a bad phone connection between the two NFL stars won’t air as an ad during Sunday’s Super Bowl. But the company released the ad Friday and fueled some hype, saying it was “banned” because of the league’s official sponsorship deal with Verizon.
Watch for GeekWire's roundup of more tech-related Super Bowl ads later today. And speaking of the NFL, check out this New York Times story on how the Seattle Seahawks managed to be the only team untouched by a single positive coronavirus test all season.
Insent raises $2M: The Seattle-based startup, which sells a “human-first” chatbot that integrates with marketing and sales platforms, graduated from the Techstars Seattle accelerator in 2019. Read more.
Tech Moves:
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Julie Larson-Green retires from her role as Qualtrics chief experience officer.
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Instacart appoints former Porch COO and current board member Asha Sharma as COO.
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GameStop names former Zulily and AWS engineering leader Matt Francis as CTO.
Catch up on those and other key personnel changes in our Tech Moves column.
Thanks for reading, and see all our latest headlines below. — GeekWire reporter Kurt Schlosser, kurt@geekwire.com, and editor Todd Bishop, todd@geekwire.com.
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