GeekWire Awards: Startup of the Year finalists share how they are using AI

The five finalists for Startup of the Year at the GeekWire Awards are using AI in one way or another, taking advantage of the latest automation tools to speed up internal development and serve customers.

The finalists are: Auger, CalmWave, Clearbrief, Oleria, and Yoodli.

We checked in with CEOs at each company to learn more about how they are using AI — see their answers and cast your vote below.

Auger

What they do: Supply chain software that unifies data, targets inefficiencies, provides real-time insights and automation.

CEO: Dave Clark

How they’re using AI: “Supply chain innovation has been constrained for decades by one problem — the requirement to have clean standardized data to gain true end-to-end visibility and execution capabilities across an operation. Auger is setting out to fix this stagnation by building an operating system that uses both ontology and AI at its core to unify fragmented, siloed data — regardless of format — into structured, actionable intelligence you can activate across an entire supply chain ecosystem. Once this foundation is in place, Auger’s platform enables customers to deploy AI operators and apps at scale across their organizations, all through a consumer-grade interface that makes complex decision-making simple.

Internally, we use LLMs to scale everything from research to content development, and to accelerate software development and testing. So, it’s safe to say — AI is part of our everyday DNA.”

CalmWave

What they do: Created a system for making sense of the alarms triggered by the devices that monitor hospital ICU patients.

CEO: Ophir Ronen

How they’re using AI: “CalmWave uses AI and automation to mitigate hospital critical care alarm fatigue, predict patient improvement or deterioration, and streamline clinical workflows. Our patented technology reduces non-actionable alarms, detects anomalies, and boosts staff efficiency. We integrate high-frequency data from Philips, GE Healthcare, Epic, and Oracle Cerner while using AI to enhance business insights. By embedding AI across our platform, we drive better patient outcomes, reduce clinician fatigue, and scale efficiently across healthcare.

Internally: Personality analyses using interview transcripts, automated report generation for internal metrics, targeted outreach to specific audiences and more.”

Clearbrief

What they do: Helps lawyers find, summarize, and verify facts for cases.

CEO: Jacqueline Schafer

How they’re using AI: “One truth that I come back to from my decade spent as a litigator is that a lawyer’s craft is so much more than simply generating text. Because we were early to the AI for legal writing space (we actually hold eight patents in AI legal writing and citations), we built classic AI tools inside Word that are used by the largest global firms to the smallest boutiques for tedious tasks like searching through 100,000 pages of evidence and inserting a hyperlinked citation to that page while writing, generating Tables of Authorities with a click, and creating hyperlinked briefs for filing.

Then in 2023, we layered in generative AI features like instantly creating a timeline with citations from those massive amounts of data, and turning a timeline into an investigation report draft with citations. But we have a lot of humility about how we present the tools to legal professionals because we know that there is so much irreplaceable human judgment required in the craft of legal writing and investigations.”

Oleria

What they do: Manages employee access to applications and data.

CEO: Jim Alkove

How they’re using AI: “The task of effectively managing access in today’s complex modern enterprises is beyond the capabilities of humans using only legacy identity security tools. The promise of AI is that it will allow us to overcome these complexities and manage access truly adaptively and autonomously. Assisted by AI, organizations will finally achieve a least-privilege security posture, address identity risks holistically, and dramatically reduce the cost of managing access. 

At Oleria, we see this as the only viable path forward. Earlier this month, we introduced Oleria Copilot, our first step in delivering on this promise for customers. With Oleria Copilot, security teams can get instant insights, simplify investigations, and enforce least privilege policies — without hours or days of manual human effort.

Internally: Oleria uses AI and automation across engineering, security testing, marketing, and G&A functions — accelerating coding, optimizing workflows, and improving efficiency across the business.”

Yoodli

What they do: AI communication coach that gives real-time feedback before and during online presentations and meetings.

CEO: Varun Puri 

How they’re using AI: “Yoodli AI Roleplays is a generative AI-first company. We use a combination of large language models and proprietary internal systems to give learners personalized, real-time, and near-realistic role-plays. This helps them ace their next speech, interview, sales pitch, or difficult conversation. Organizations like Google, Sandler Sales, and RingCentral customize Yoodli to give feedback to their learners in their methodology.

Internally, we use generative AI all the time across our sales stack, product-led growth outreach, engineering workflows, and more. In fact, I’m writing this message using my personal text-to-speech AI co-pilot that is then re-writing it to sound like it’s in my voice.”

The GeekWire Awards recognize the top innovators and companies in Pacific Northwest technology. Finalists in this category and others were selected based on community nominations, along with input from GeekWire Awards judges. Community voting across all categories will continue until March 23, combined with feedback from judges to determine the winner in each category.

We'll announce the winners on April 30 at the GeekWire Awards, presented by Astound Business Solutions. There are a limited number of half-table and full-table sponsorships available to attend the event. Contact our events team at events@geekwire.com to reserve a spot for your team today.

Last year’s Startup of the Year winner was Pictory, a Seattle-based startup that uses AI to help content creators and marketers make short-form videos.

Cast your vote across all categories here: Create your own user feedback survey

Astound Business Solutions is the presenting sponsor of the 2025 GeekWire Awards. Thanks also to gold sponsors JLL, Baird, Wilson Sonsini, Baker Tilly and First Tech, and supporting sponsors ALLtech and Showbox Presents.