Bellevue’s new mayor wants to keep up with the pace of innovation in the growing AI space – GeekWire

Mo Malakoutian has been mayor of Bellevue, Wash., for about a month. He’d like to take credit for the Seattle Seahawks winning (and winning) the Super Bowl, the World Cup coming to the region this summer, and all the recent sunshine — not the worst political scenario imaginable.

A longtime engineer, education and technology industry veteran, Malakoutian is executive director of the Consulting and Business Development Center at the University of Washington’s Foster School of Business and an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering. He spent eight years at Amazon before leaving last fall as senior manager of learning and development.

Malakoutian was elected to the Bellevue City Council in 2023 and served as vice mayor in 2024 and 2025 before being unanimously elected mayor in Jan. 9, succeeding Council Member Lynne Robinson, who served as mayor for six years.

Originally from Iran, Malakoutian spent eight years in construction before coming to the US to get his PhD in structural engineering at the UW.

We caught up to talk about how his technology background informs his leadership style; managing Bellevue’s significant growth as a technology hub; his opinion on the Eastside vs. Seattle; transportation; AI; and more. Our Q&A is organized to be concise and clear.

GeekWire: How does your technology background – including eight years at Amazon – inform your management style? Can we expect you to lean on Amazon’s leadership principles?

Malakoutian: When I started [at Amazon] in 2017 and you hear all these leadership principles, you say, ‘My God, what’s going on?’ After two or three years, I was holding myself back because I used those in conversations with my friends: ‘Please make me trust you. … Are we delivering results?’

We use that day with one idea [from] Amazon. We wanted to be bureaucratic when we could and work with our colleagues on Council and city staff to have a safe and efficient city that moves, hopefully, at the pace of innovation. Innovation and technology move very quickly, and we must also be patient and quick to discover what is happening around us.

GW: OpenAI recently moved into more office space in downtown Bellevue. Amazon is a big place. Now Elon Musk’s xAI is opening an engineering center. What role do you think city policy should play in balancing this technological growth with quality of life?

Malakoutian: We need to make the city safe, clean, functional and have a high quality of life — that’s how we think about growth. We build houses. We build transportation. We care if people get frustrated on the road. We want people who work here to actually be able to live here – that’s linked to our affordable housing strategy. We want to be friends with businesses. We want them as an engine that helps pay for our infrastructure, parks, schools and local development. If we don’t do that, we won’t be able to achieve all our goals.

GW: Why do you think Bellevue is the place for AI companies, especially relative to Seattle? What does Bellevue do to hire companies, if anything, and does it like the “AI hub” label?

Malakoutian: I think Bellevue really depends on execution. When companies choose us, it’s because they value transparency and consistency. They want a functioning city, where consent is visible, infrastructure is modern, and roads are safe. When a CEO is trying to recruit the best talent in the world, things like our schools, safety, and parks aren’t just nice to have – they’re a competitive advantage.

Our strategy is built on fundamentals. Through our Economic Development Plan, we are turning the city into a living laboratory. Whether it’s our innovation platform or the Civic Innovation Challenge, we allow startups to test real solutions. We want companies to choose Bellevue because this is a place where they can do things.

AI is the big engine of the future, but the label doesn’t mean much if it’s not based on social values. We want an ecosystem where our large employers thrive, but where our small businesses are not left behind. Whether it’s management training, better access to finance, or opening new markets, we focus on what our local stores and employees need to stay competitive. If we create a safe, vibrant, and creative platform for everyone, the “hub” label will take care of itself.

GW: What are your thoughts on AI as it applies to city government?

Malakoutian: We want our entire community to be a part of this creative economy. We don’t want anyone to fall behind, because if they fall behind, they will fall behind on everything. So we do a lot. We use AI to enable – developers ask us to be faster, more reliable. We want to bring everyone. We all have to learn AI well. Being able to apply that in your daily life is necessary.

GW: Do you have a vision for downtown Bellevue in the next few years? Is it a residence, experience, or office space for the Prime Minister?

Malakoutian: All of the above. Are you familiar with a place called Wilburton? It is an area on the east side of the city. As part of our overall plan, we have increased the density in that area, multi-use housing and retail. Then we connect Wilburton to downtown Bellevue with a bridge over the 405. We call that bridge the Grand Connection. The idea is that people work there, live there, enjoy restaurants and grocery shopping there, and can walk downtown to the offices of Amazon and all those AI technology companies that we have. We want to make it 24/7 Bellevue. We want to have a healthy city, that keeps people after 5pm

GW: When it comes to the Eastside vs. Seattle, do you prefer a regional strategy, or do you have a competitive streak where you want to win for Bellevue?

Malakoutian: Regional strategy. We see the success of what Bellevue is doing, and we will continue to do so. We pride ourselves on being intentional about our planning, about public safety, about the high quality of government services we have. However, most of our stories are regional. Seattle’s success is Bellevue’s success. Homelessness is a regional problem. Transportation is a regional issue. It’s all about working together as a whole.

GW: You must be especially excited about the East Link light rail and the upcoming connection over Lake Washington.

Malakoutian: Definitely. We are ready to make that connection between Seattle and us. Equality, for me, is very important, connecting people and making people move I think is very important for the economy and for the whole society.

Bellevue’s success is that anything that comes our way grows – a new light rail, anything. We plan before the game. How can we make it accessible? How can we make it work? How can we provide the security that people expect from us? This planning and thinking that the City of Bellevue has is going to be very helpful, and helpful to us.

GW: What are your thoughts on the debates about the federal tax structure – capital gains tax, millionaire’s tax, etc.?

Malakoutian: Last year, we sent a letter from my hometown, so that’s what I can talk about. Overall, we thought that everything is more expensive, more development is happening, businesses are paying more taxes. Anything else is bad for our economy. We said we think Bellevue’s economy is Washington’s economy. If something is wrong with Bellevue, it is wrong with Washington.

This year, we hope that the state will talk to us. We know if they raise the B&O tax, for example, what kind of unintended harm that would do to the economy. I know they are facing a very challenging revenue shortfall, and they have to manage that. I sympathize with that, but we need to protect our economy. We need to protect our small and large businesses.