The trend helps explain the push behind such projects as Facebook-founder Mark Zuckerberg’s Metaverse or Elon Musk’s space-based internet through Starlink.
While Silicon Valley has had a lot of successes, it’s fair to argue that the economic growth and societal benefits it produced were fairly narrow, with the winners mostly being young, tech-savvy workers on the West Coast.
Business focus areas too often revolved around things like online ads, e-commerce and food delivery.
The negative effects of the grow-at-all-costs mindset — exploiting independent “gig” workers and playing fast and loose with financials — seemed to be accepted as a necessary byproduct of success.
Told he wasn’t crazy enough: WeWork founder Adam Neumann received an exit package of around $US1 billion. Credit:AP
The infrastructure bills and funding streams passed by Congress last year are in part a response to the perceived shortcomings of that venture-capital model and Silicon Valley culture.
Projects will only get funding if they’re of national importance — building semiconductors, addressing climate change, facilitating the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy.
Benchmarks for success aren’t as intense as venture capital requires, giving companies more time to pursue their ideas.
SU President Joe Biden speaks about the CHIPS and Science Act.Credit:AP
And as the Biden administration last week rolled out details of its US Chips and Science Act, the standout feature of the plan was all the strings attached to the funding.
Companies accepting money in the program will have to ensure adequate child care for employees and accept restrictions on dividends and stock buybacks. There are en ..
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