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Tag: silicon valley

  • Sundance doc ‘Ghost in the Machine’ draws a damning line between AI and eugenics

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    The Sundance documentary Ghost in the Machine boldly declares that the pursuit of artificial intelligence, and Silicon Valley itself, is rooted in eugenics.

    Director Valerie Veatch makes the case that the rise of techno-fascism from the likes of Elon Musk and Peter Thiel is a feature, not a bug. That may sound hyperbolic, but Ghost in the Machine, which is built around interviews with philosophers, AI researchers, historians and computer scientists, leaves little room for doubt.

    If you’ve been following the meteoric rise of AI, or Silicon Valley in general, Veatch’s methodical deconstruction of the technology doesn’t really unearth anything new. The film begins with the utter failure of Microsoft’s Tay chatbot, which wasted no time in becoming a Hitler-loving white supremacist. It retreads the environmental impacts of AI datacenters, as well as the ways tech companies have relied on low-wage workers from Africa and elsewhere to improve their algorithms.

    But even I was surprised to learn that we can trace the impact of eugenics in tech all the way back to Karl Pearson, the mathematician who pioneered the field of statistics, and who also spent his life trying to quantify the differences between races. (Guess who he believed was superior.) His legacy was continued by William Shockley, a co-creator of the transistor, an avowed white supremacist who spent his later years espousing (now debunked) theories around IQ and racial differences.

    An early robot toy. (Valerie Veatch for “Ghost in the Machine”)

    As a Stanford engineering professor, Shockley fostered a culture of prioritizing white men over women and minorities, which ultimately shaped the way Silicon Valley looks today. His line of thinking could have had an influence on John McCarthy, the Stanford researcher who coined the term “artificial intelligence” in 1955,

    With roots like that, Elon Musk — known to spout bigotry online,  foster a reportedly racist work environment at Tesla and  throw the occasionaly few Nazi salute — looks less like an anomaly than part of a pattern. Ghost in the Machine asks a simple question: How can we trust men like this (and it’s almost always men that look like Musk) with our future?

    Through its many interviews, which include the likes of AI researcher Dr. Emily Bender, historian Becca Lewis and media theorist Douglass Rushkoff, Ghost in the Machine paints the rise of AI as a fascistic project that aims to demean humans and establish the techno-elite as our de facto rulers. Given how much our lives are already dominated by gadgets and social networks from companies that have pioneered addictive engagement over user safety, it’s easy to imagine history repeating itself with AI.

    Ghost in the Machine doesn’t leave any room for considering potential benefits around AI, which could lead proponents of the technology to dismiss it as a hit-job. But we’re currently at the apex of the AI hype cycle, after Big Tech has invested hundreds of billions of dollars on this technology, and after it has spent years shoving it down our throats without proving why it’s actually useful to many people. AI should be able to withstand a bit of criticism.

    Ghost in the Machine is available to view at the Sundance Film Festival’s website and streaming apps from today through the end of Sunday, February 1st.  

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    Devindra Hardawar

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  • Palo Alto: After 36 years, Il Fornaio restaurant, a tech favorite, is closing

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    Two upscale, see-and-be-seen Il Fornaio restaurants are ending their tenure, including the Palo Alto location — a prime spot for years for Silicon Valley power breakfasts and deal-making dinners.

    After 36 years, that Cowper Street restaurant will shut its doors Sunday night. The Beverly Hills Il Fornaio closed a week ago after a 43-year run.

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    Linda Zavoral

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  • Silicon Valley Is Flirting with a Very Stupid New Way to Die

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    I apologize in advance for invoking Voltaire in an article about peptides, but in Chapter 22 of Candide there’s this part where Candide comes to Paris, and, since that’s where Voltaire lived—surrounded by the annoying Parisians who inspired his work—instantly encounters cretins who are so stupid it’s actively life-threatening. They see the huge diamond on Candide’s ring and his expensive luggage, and notice that he’s feeling slightly unwell, so they spring into action trying to sell him cures that, of course, almost kill him.

    While Candide is getting over his brush with death, his smarter friend Martin says, “I remember also to have been sick at Paris in my first voyage; I was very poor, thus I had neither friends, devotees, nor doctors, and I recovered.”

    It’s like this in Silicon Valley right now (not for the first time I’m sure). The rich and their hangers-on are in a form of peril indirectly caused by the miasma of money permeating their region.

    A New York Times’ article from this weekend is about tech people buying vials of powdered amino acids that are made in China, fixing syringes with them, and shooting them into their bodies, all because they’ve heard vague promises from podcasters and chatbots that, finally, you can needle hack your blood vibes and achieve optimum efficiency in your bodily codebase. Health claims about peptides run the gamut from the reasonable, such as weight loss, to the fantastical, like that they fix autism. 

    All you really need to see to process what’s happening is one photo from the article by Jason Henry. It’s a picture taken at a “peptide rave” in San Francisco featuring a guy in a white lab coat and black boots, with a familiar orange and white syringe in his hand, demoing the process, familiar to all heroin addicts, of turning a powder into an injectable liquid. His audience is a small crowd of blurry people with White Claw cans in their hands. There’s a piece of printer paper on a table at his demo station with a QR code on it and the word “WAIVER.”

    If anyone has died from doing this recently it’s not in the article, but the fad is apparently still on the rise. “According to U.S. customs data,” Jasmine Sun, the piece’s author, notes, “imports of hormone and peptide compounds from China roughly doubled to $328 million in the first three quarters of 2025, from $164 million in the same period of 2024.”

    Peptides aren’t all that expensive on their own. The piece points to a form of off-brand Ozempic, which is an example of a peptide, going for about $200 per month. But the kind of peptide habit the tech founders and influencers Sun describes isn’t just a matter of obtaining the powder, reconstituting it, and shooting it.

    For instance, one co-founder of a bleak-sounding B2B AI startup started her peptide habit by “microdosing semaglutide,” and then added an additional five peptides: “MOTS-c, epitalon, GHK-Cu, Ipamorelin and Kisspeptin-10.” She then pays an additional $250 per peptide to send her powders to a purity testing lab in the Czech Republic.

    Another apparent business leader—the CEO of a sort of rationalist version of Burning Man called “Vibecamp”—takes BPC-157, TB-500, and retatrutide, but at one point she accidentally took too much of that last one and experienced a racing heartbeat and her hair started falling out. She uses an app, monitors her vitals while she sleeps, and subjects herself to regular blood tests.

    Would you guess that Bryan Johnson—that guy who is famous for being very open about the fact that he, like everyone, doesn’t want to die, but has responded to that universal experience by turning himself into a one-man media circus, and posting a lot of eerie photos of himself on social media where his translucent looking skin seems wet and thin, like blowing on him from across a room would cause him pain—is in the tank for peptides?

    You would be sort of right, but I think it speaks volumes that he has preached caution when asked about them, saying he likes them for his hair and skin, but that there’s “limited research for many peptides, so it is hard to make a blanket statement about them other than do your research, measure and use a reputable supplier.”

    Sure, you could argue that he’s saying this because he doesn’t want to be sued (more than he already has). But, again, he doesn’t want to die, folks. 

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    Mike Pearl

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  • Tech Companies Show Feet as They Try to Appeal to Gen Z

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    Over the last year or so, Silicon Valley made an all-out push for employees to return to the office. Now that the industry has people back at their desks, it’s trying to figure out how to make them happy. The influx of office dwellers, including a growing number of Gen Z representatives, has the Valley trying new things, like shoeless offices.

    According to the New York Times, the “no shoes” movement has picked up steam at startups, with businesses encouraging employees to leave their kicks at the door. Ben Lang, an employee at the shoeless AI coding company Cursor, launched a website called Noshoes.fun that tracks the options for prospective employees who like to let their toes get some fresh air. The list includes digital workspace maker Notion, payroll company Gusto, mobile games developer Supercell, and a number of AI-centric startups like Replicate and Rime Labs.

    Now, whether going shoeless around others really adds much comfort to your work day is probably a matter of personal preference. But the idea behind it, per the Times, is to allow employees who are being made to go back to commuting to work some of the same comfort they once had while working from home. It is also apparently, in part, because the workforce at these offices skews young, and these companies are trying to figure out what exactly it is that Gen Z wants.

    Elsewhere, they’re going less for regenerative and more degenerate. According to the Wall Street Journal, some startups have started filling the snack bar with Zyn and other nicotine pouches. Palantir—the surveillance tech company run by Trump-aligned, pro-war crime CEO Alex Karp—has apparently been on the front lines of this push, presumably because the hit from the pouches is the only thing that allows its employees to calm down after pushing out a new update to improve the efficacy of murder drones.

    At this point, corporate America’s general confusion as to how to accommodate a younger cohort that generally seems to expect more of its employer than generations before it. Executives have labeled Gen Z as things like “undisciplined,” “entitled,” and “lazy”—though frankly, every generation seems to go through this slander as they enter the workforce.

    But the cultural divide seems to be about as big as it’s ever been. According to a report from CBS News, some companies are even going so far as to send their Gen Z employees to etiquette classes so they can learn how to behave in mixed company settings like an office.

    Interpreted as friendly as possible, the trend is an attempt to help Gen Z get up to speed on some of the lessons it may have missed by having a chunk of its socialization period stolen by a global pandemic. Taken a little less generously, it’s corporate entities trying to push a generation of people who have more expectations of work-life balance, better boundaries around their time and effort, and demand more respect from their bosses to fall in line with an industry that pushes work over everything. Given that, it’s hard to imagine that letting people stand at the water cooler in socks and slippers is going to win them over.

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    AJ Dellinger

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  • The 11 big trades of 2025: Bubbles, cockroaches and a 367% jump

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    It was another year of high-conviction bets — and fast reversals.

    From bond desks in Tokyo and credit committees in New York to currency traders in Istanbul, markets delivered both windfalls and whiplash. Gold hit records. Staid mortgage behemoths gyrated like meme stocks. A textbook carry trade blew up in a flash.

    Investors bet big on shifting politics, bloated balance sheets and fragile narratives, fueling outsized stock rallies, crowded yield trades, and crypto strategies built on leverage, hope, and not much else. Donald Trump’s White House return quickly sank — and then revived — financial markets across the world, lit a fire under European defense stocks, and emboldened speculators fanning mania after mania. Some positions paid off spectacularly. Others misfired when momentum reversed, financing dried up or leverage cut the wrong way.

    As the year draws to a close, Bloomberg highlights some of the most eye-catching wagers of 2025 — the wins, the wipeouts and the positions that defined the era. Many of those bets leave investors fretting over all-too-familiar fault lines as they prepare for 2026: shaky companies, stretched valuations, and trend-chasing trades that work, until they don’t.

    Crypto: Trumped

    It looked like one of crypto’s more compelling momentum bets: load up on anything and everything tied to the Trump brand. During his presidential campaign and after he took office, Trump went all-in on digital assets — pushing sweeping reforms and installing industry allies across powerful agencies. His family leaned in, championing coins and crypto firms that traders treated as political rocket fuel.

    The franchise came together fast. Hours before the inauguration, Trump launched a memecoin and promoted it on social media. First Lady Melania Trump soon followed with her own token. Later in the year, Trump family–affiliated World Liberty Financial made its WLFI token tradable and available to retail investors. A set of Trump-adjacent trades followed. Eric Trump co-founded American Bitcoin, a publicly traded miner that went public via a merger in September.

    Each debut sparked a rally. Each proved ephemeral. As of Dec. 23, Trump’s memecoin was floundering, off more than 80% from its January high. Melania’s was down nearly 99%, according to CoinGecko. American Bitcoin had sunk about 80% from its September peak.

    Politics gave the trades a push. The laws of speculation pulled them back down. Even with a friend in the White House, these trades couldn’t escape crypto’s core pattern: prices rise, leverage floods in, and liquidity dries up. Bitcoin, still the bellwether, is on track for an annual loss after slumping from its October peak. For Trump-linked assets, politics offered momentum, but no protection. — Olga Kharif

    AI Trade: The Next Big Short?

    The trade was revealed in a routine filing, yet its impact was anything but routine. Scion Asset Management disclosed on Nov. 3 that it held protective put options in Nvidia Corp. and Palantir Technologies Inc. — stocks at the center of the artificial intelligence trade that’s powered the market’s rally for three years. While not a whale-sized hedge fund, Scion commands attention due to the person who runs it: Michael Burry, who earned fame as a market prophet in The Big Short book and movie about the mortgage bubble that led to the 2008 crisis.

    The strike prices were startling: Nvidia’s was 47% below where the stock had just closed, while Palantir’s was 76% below. But some mystery lingered: Due to limited reporting requirements, it was unclear if the puts — contracts that give an investor the right to sell a stock at a certain price by a certain date — were part of a more complicated trade. And the filing offered just a snapshot of Scion’s books on Sept. 30, leaving open the possibility that Burry had since trimmed or exited the positions. Yet skepticism about the lofty valuations and massive spending plans of major AI players had been building like a pile of dry kindling. Burry’s disclosure landed like a freshly struck match.

    Nvidia, the largest stock in the world, tumbled in reaction, as did Palantir, though they later regained ground. The Nasdaq also dipped.

    It’s impossible to know exactly how much Burry made. One bread crumb he left was a post on X saying he paid $1.84 for the Palantir puts; those options went on to gain as much as 101% in less than three weeks. The filing crystallized doubts simmering beneath a market dominated by a narrow group of AI-linked stocks, heavy passive inflows and subdued volatility. Whether the trade proves prescient or premature, it underscored how quickly even the most dominant market narratives can turn once belief begins to crack. — Michael P. Regan

    Defense Stocks: New World Order

    A geopolitical shift has led to huge gains in a sector once deemed toxic by asset managers: European defense. Trump’s plans to take a step back from funding Ukraine’s military sent European governments into a spending spree, giving a huge lift to shares of regional defense firms — from the roughly 150% year-to-date rally in Germany’s Rheinmetall AG as of Dec. 23, to Italy’s Leonardo SpA more than 90% ascent during the period.

    Money managers who once saw the sector as too controversial to touch amid environmental, social and governance concerns changed their tune and a number of funds even redefined their mandates.

    “We had taken defense out of our ESG funds until the beginning of this year,” said Pierre Alexis Dumont, chief investment officer at Sycomore Asset Management. “There was a change of paradigm, and when there is a change of paradigm, one has to be responsible and also defend one’s values. So we’re focusing on defensive weapons.”

    From goggle makers to chemicals producers, and even a printing company, stocks were snapped up in a mad rush. A Bloomberg basket of European defense stocks was up more than 70% for the year as of Dec. 23. The boom spilled into credit markets as well, with firms only tangentially linked to defense attracting hordes of prospective lenders. Banks even started selling “European Defence Bonds,” modeled on green bonds except in this case ringfenced for borrowers like weapons manufacturers. It marked a repricing of defense as a public good rather than a reputational liability — and a reminder that when geopolitics shifts, capital tends to follow faster than ideology. — Isolde MacDonogh

    Debasement Trade: Fact or Fiction? 

    Heavy debt loads in major economies such as the US, France and Japan — and a lack of political appetite to confront them — pushed some investors in 2025 to tout gold and alternative assets like crypto, while cooling enthusiasm for government bonds and the US dollar. The idea gained traction under a bearish label: the “debasement trade,” a nod to historic episodes when rulers such as Nero diluted the value of money to cope with fiscal strain.

    The narrative reached a crescendo in October, when concerns over the US fiscal outlook collided with the longest government shutdown on record. Investors searched for shelter beyond the dollar. That month, gold and Bitcoin both rose to records — a rare moment for assets often cast as rivals.

    As a story, debasement offered a clean explanation for a messy macro backdrop. As a trade, it proved more complicated. Bitcoin has since slumped amid a broader retreat in cryptocurrencies. The dollar stabilized somewhat. Treasuries, far from collapsing, are on track for their best year since 2020 — a reminder that fears of fiscal erosion can coexist with powerful demand for safe assets, particularly when growth slows and policy rates peak.

    Elsewhere, price action told a different story. Swings in metals from copper to aluminum, and even silver, were driven at least as much by Donald Trump’s tariff policies and macro forces as by concerns about currency debasement, blurring the line between inflation hedging and old-fashioned supply shocks. Gold, meanwhile, has kept powering ahead, reaching new all-time highs. In that corner of the market, the debasement trade endured — less as a sweeping judgment on fiat, more as a focused bet on rates, policy and protection. — Richard Henderson

    Korean Stocks: K-Pop

    Move over, K-drama. When it comes to plot twists and thrills, it’s hard to beat this year’s action in South Korea’s stock market. Fueled by President Lee Jae Myung’s efforts to boost the country’s capital markets, the benchmark equity index rocketed more than 70% in 2025 through Dec. 22, headed toward his aspirational goal of 5000 and handily topping the charts among major stock gauges worldwide.

    It’s rare to see a political leader publicly set an index level as a goal, and Lee’s “Kospi 5000” campaign drew little attention when it was first announced. Now, more and more Wall Street banks including JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Citigroup Inc. think it’s achievable in 2026, helped in part by the global AI boom, which has increased demand for South Korean stocks as Asia’s go-to artificial intelligence trade.

    There is one notable absence from the Kospi’s world-beating rally: local retail investors. While Lee often reminds voters that he was once a retail investor himself before entering public office, his reform agenda has yet to persuade domestic investors that the market is a durable buy-and-hold proposition. Even as foreign money has poured into Korean equities, local mom-and-pop investors have been net sellers, channeling a record $33 billion into US stocks and chasing higher-risk bets ranging from crypto to leveraged exchange-traded funds overseas.

    One side effect has been pressure on the currency. As capital flowed outward, the won weakened, a reminder that even blockbuster equity rallies can mask lingering skepticism at home. — Youkyung Lee

    Bitcoin Showdown: Chanos v Saylor

    There are two sides to every story. In the case of short-seller Jim Chanos’s arbitrage play involving Bitcoin hoarder Michael Saylor’s Strategy Inc., there were also two big personalities, and a trade that was fast becoming a referendum on crypto-era capitalism.

    In early 2025, as Bitcoin soared and Strategy’s shares went through the roof, Chanos saw an opportunity. The rally in Strategy had stretched the premium the company’s shares enjoyed relative to its Bitcoin holdings, something the legendary investor saw as unsustainable. So he decided to short Strategy and go long Bitcoin, announcing the move in May when the premium was still wide.

    Chanos and Saylor started publicly trading barbs. “I don’t think he understands what our business model is,” Saylor told Bloomberg TV in June about Chanos, who in turn, called Saylor’s explanations “complete financial gibberish” in an X post.

    Strategy’s shares hit a record in July, marking a 57% year-to-date gain, but as the number of so-called digital asset treasury firms exploded and crypto token prices fell from their highs, Strategy shares — and those of its copycats — began to suffer and the company’s premium to Bitcoin shrank. Chanos’s wager was paying off.

    From the time Chanos made his short call on Strategy public through Nov. 7, the date he said he exited from the position, Strategy shares dropped 42%. Beyond the P&L, it illustrated a recurring crypto boom-and-bust pattern: balance sheets inflated by confidence, and confidence sustained by rising prices and financial engineering. It works until belief falters — at which point the premium stops being a feature and starts being the problem. — Monique Mulima

    Japanese Bonds: Widowmaker to Rainmaker

    If there was one bet that repeatedly burned macro investors in the past few decades, it’s the infamous “widowmaker” wager against Japanese bonds. The reasoning behind the trade always seemed simple. Japan carried a vast public debt, and so the thinking was that interest rates just had to rise sooner or later to lure in enough buyers. Investors, therefore, borrowed bonds and sold them, expecting prices to fall once reality asserted itself. For years, however, that logic proved premature and expensive, as the central bank’s loose policies kept borrowing costs low and punished anyone who tried to rush the outcome. No longer.

    In 2025, the widowmaker turned rainmaker as yields on benchmark government bonds surged across the board, making the $7.4 trillion Japan debt market a short-seller’s dream. The triggers spanned everything from interest rate hikes to Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi unleashing the country’s biggest burst of spending since pandemic restrictions eased. Yields on benchmark 10-year JGBs soared past 2% to reach levels not seen in decades, while those on 30-year paper advanced more than a full percentage point to an all-time high. A Bloomberg gauge of Japanese government bond returns fell more than 6% this year through Dec. 23, the worst-performing major market in the world.

    Fund managers from Schroders to Jupiter Asset Management to RBC BlueBay Asset Management discussed selling JGBs in some form during the year and investors and strategists are betting the trade has room to run, as benchmark policy rates edge higher. On top of that, the Bank of Japan is trimming its bond purchases, pressuring yields. And with the nation boasting the highest government debt-to-GDP ratio in the developed world by a wide margin, bearishness to JGBs is likely to persist. — Cormac Mullen

    Credit Scraps: Playing Hardball Pays

    Some of 2025’s richest credit payoffs didn’t come from turnaround bets, but from turning on fellow investors. The dynamic, known as “creditor-on-creditor violence,” paid off big for funds like Pacific Investment Management Co. and King Street Capital Management, who waged a calculated campaign around KKR-backed Envision Healthcare.

    When Envision, a hospital staffing company, ran aground after the Covid-19 pandemic, it needed a loan from new investors. But raising new debt meant pledging assets already spoken for. While many debt holders formed a group to oppose the new financing, Pimco, King Street and Partners Group broke ranks. Their support enabled a vote to allow the collateral — a stake in Envision’s valuable ambulatory-surgery business Amsurg — to be released by the old lenders and used to back the new debt.

    The funds became holders of Amsurg-backed debt that eventually converted into Amsurg equity. Then Amsurg sold to Ascension Health this year for $4 billion. The funds who spurned their peers generated returns of around 90%, by one measure, demonstrating the payoff from waging such internecine battles. The lesson: in today’s credit markets, governed by loose documentation and fragmented creditor groups, cooperation is optional. Being right is not always enough. The bigger risk is being outflanked. —Eliza Ronalds-Hannon

    Fannie-Freddie: Revenge of the “Toxic Twins”

    Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the mortgage-finance giants that have been under Washington’s control since the financial crisis, have long been the subject of speculation over when and how they would be released from the government’s grip. Boosters such as hedge fund manager Bill Ackman loaded up on the two in the hopes of scoring a windfall on any privatization plan, but the shares languished for years in over-the-counter trading as the status quo prevailed.

    Then came Donald Trump’s re-election, which catapulted the stocks into a meme-like zeal on optimism the new administration would take steps to free up the companies. In 2025, the excitement ratcheted up even more: The shares soared 367% from the start of the year to their high in September — 388% on an intraday basis — and remain big winners for 2025.

    Driving the momentum to its peak this year was word in August that the administration was contemplating an IPO that could value the enterprises at around $500 billion or more, involving selling 5% to 15% of their stock to raise about $30 billion. While the shares have wavered from their September high amid skepticism about when, and whether, an IPO will actually materialize, many remain confident in the story.

    Ackman in November unveiled a proposal he pitched to the White House, which calls for relisting Fannie and Freddie on the New York Stock Exchange, writing down the Treasury’s senior-preferred stake and exercising the government’s option to acquire nearly 80% of the common stock. Even Michael Burry joined the party, announcing a bullish position in early December and musing in a 6,000-word blog post that the companies which once needed the government to save them from insolvency may be “toxic twins no more.” — Felice Maranz

    Turkey Carry Trade: Cooked

    The Turkish carry trade was a consensus favorite for emerging-market investors after a stellar 2024. With local bond yields above 40% and a central bank backing a stable dollar peg, traders piled in — borrowing cheaply abroad to buy high-yield Turkish assets. That drew billions from firms like Deutsche Bank, Millennium Partners and Gramercy — some of them on the ground in Turkey on March 19, the day the trade blew up in minutes.

    It was on that morning that Turkish police raided the home of Istanbul’s popular opposition mayor and took him into custody, sparking protests — and a frenzied selloff in the lira that the central bank was unable to contain. “People got caught very much by surprise and won’t go back in a hurry,” Kit Juckes, head of FX strategy at Societe Generale SA in Paris, said at the time.

    By the end of the day, outflows from Turkish lira-denominated assets were estimated at around $10 billion, and the market never really recovered. As of Dec. 23, the lira was some 17% weaker against the dollar for the year, one of the world’s worst performers. The episode served as a reminder that high interest rates can reward risk-takers, but they offer no protection against sudden political shocks. — Kerim Karakaya

    Debt Markets: Cockroach Alert

    Credit markets in 2025 were unsettled not by a single spectacular collapse, but by a series of smaller ones that exposed uncomfortable habits. Companies once considered routine borrowers ran into trouble, leaving lenders nursing steep losses.

    Saks Global restructured $2.2 billion in bonds after making only a single interest payment, and the restructured debt is itself now trading at less than 60 cents on the dollar. New Fortress Energy’s newly-exchanged bonds lost more than half their value in the span of a year. The bankruptcies of Tricolor and then First Brands wiped out billions in debt holdings in a matter of weeks. In some cases, sophisticated fraud was at the root of the collapse. In others, rosy projections failed to materialize. In every case, investors were left to answer for how they justified taking large credit gambles on companies with little to no proof they’d be able to repay the debt.

    Years of low defaults and loose money eroded standards, from lender protections to basic underwriting. Lenders to both First Brands and Tricolor had failed to discover the borrowers were allegedly double-pledging assets and co-mingling collateral that backed various loans.

    Those lenders included JPMorgan, whose chief executive Jamie Dimon put the market on alert in October when he colorfully warned of more trouble to come, saying, “When you see one cockroach, there are probably more.” A theme for 2026. — Eliza Ronalds-Hannon

    –With assistance from Benjamin Harvey, Kerim Karakaya, Youkyung Lee, Cormac Mullen, Michael P. Regan, Isolde MacDonogh, Eliza Ronalds-Hannon, Yvonne Yue Li and Matt Turner.

    More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com

    ©2025 Bloomberg L.P.

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    Bloomberg

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  • Filipino engineer and entrepreneur dies at 79

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    Filipino tech entrepreneur Diosdado “Dado” Banatao died at the age of 79.

    Banatao is known for pioneering the technology that made personal computers possible, thus putting Silicon Valley on the map. He also co-founded three technology companies and started a nonprofit to help support Filipinos in STEM fields.

    “Rising from humble beginnings in Cagayan, he went on to co-found transformative technology companies and played a pivotal role in advancing the global semiconductor and graphics industries,” said the National Federation of Filipino American Associations on LinkedIn in honor of Banatao’s passing. “Just as importantly, he invested deeply in people opening doors, mentoring founders and strengthening communities.”

    According to a post on his website by his family, Banatao passed away peacefully on Christmas Day, surrounded by family and friends. His family said he “succumbed to complications from a neurological disorder that hit him late in his life.” He would have been 80 in May.

    His family wrote, “We are mourning his loss, but take comfort from the time spent with him during this Christmas season, and that his fight with this disease is over.”

    Banatao was born to a rice farmer and housekeeper in Iguig, Cagayan, according to ABS-CBN. According to his 2015 documentary, he didn’t have access to electricity growing up and was taught math using bamboo sticks. He said it was typical for his classmates to stop going to school after sixth grade to help their parents work in the fields, but his father told him to continue studying.

    He developed a love for engineering and graduated with a degree in electric engineering from Mapua Institute of Technology, a private research university in Manila. He said in his documentary that there were no design jobs for engineers in the Philippines, so he moved to the U.S. and pursued a master’s degree in electrical engineering and computer science at Stanford University. He graduated in 1972.

    Soon after college, Banatao worked as a design engineering at Boeing. ABS-CBN reported that he then went on to work for other technology companies, like National Semiconductor and Intersil. While at Commodore International, he designed the first single chip, 16-bit microprocessor-based calculator.

    He is credited with developing the first 10-Mbit ethernet CMOS chip in 1981 while working at Seeq Technology. He also developed the first system logic chipset for IBM’s PC-XT and PC-AT and one of the first graphics accelerators for personal computers. These inventions allowed for faster computer performance, according to Inquirer.net. The Harvard Club of Southern California credited Banatao for bringing GPS technology to consumers.

    “Dado is the man who invented a graphical chipset that took us from black screens with green writing to the dynamic displays we have today,” the club wrote for a description of a lecture he gave in 2017 for the Harvard Business School Association of Orange County.

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    Nollyanne Delacruz

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  • The 4 Things You Need for a Tech Bubble

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    Chatter about an AI bubble has been everywhere lately, and top tech companies like Google, Meta, and Microsoft have doubled down on their AI investments for 2026. But how have analysts in the past accurately identified forming tech bubbles? Hosts Michael Calore and Lauren Goode sit down with Brian Merchant, WIRED contributor and author of the newsletter Blood in the Machine, to break down the four criteria some researchers have used in the past to understand and brace for the worst.

    Articles mentioned in the episode:

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    You can follow Michael Calore on Bluesky at @snackfight and Lauren Goode on Bluesky at @laurengoode. Write to us at uncannyvalley@wired.com.

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    Transcript

    Note: This is an automated transcript, which may contain errors.

    Michael Calore: Hey Lauren, how are you doing?

    Lauren Goode: I’m OK, Mike. It’s earnings season, so a lot of us on the business desk here at WIRED have been tuning into tech companies earnings reports and their earnings calls. And I guess that basically means it’s CapEx season.

    Michael Calore: CapEx?

    Lauren Goode: Capital expenditures.

    Michael Calore: You say CapEx?

    Lauren Goode: Yeah. Now that I’m a business desk reporter, I say CapEx.

    Michael Calore: You’re one of those.

    Lauren Goode: I throw it around at parties. No, I really don’t. But we are seeing a trend in how tech companies are sleeping on piles of money, but they aren’t just sleeping on it. They’re sharing big plans to spend on it, and especially to spend on AI infrastructure.

    Michael Calore: Right. Data centers.

    Lauren Goode: Yeah, more data centers. Not just data centers, but yes, that’s a big part of it.

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    Lauren Goode, Michael Calore

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  • The Double Bind of the AI Bubble Means We’re Screwed Whether the Tech Succeeds or Fails

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    The stock market is largely being propped up by a promise of AI that has yet to deliver—setting up what could be a disastrous bubble. But the AI land rush isn’t merely a risky gamble. Wall Street is staking the health of the markets—and that of the broader economy with it—on a bet against the common good.

    It seems to be a lose-lose situation for those outside Wall Street and Silicon Valley: If the frenzied investment in artificial intelligence is overheated, as even OpenAI’s Sam Altman has warned, the markets could be hit hard enough to shake the economy as a whole—making an impact worse than that of the dot-com bust 25 years ago. But if the gamble pays off, it’ll mean a boom for a technology that could bring about widespread unemployment and social disruption.

    “If this works as fast as VC money seems to be hoping, society seems wholly unprepared for the consequences,” as Daniel Barcay, executive director of the Center for Humane Technology, tells Vanity Fair, citing potential mass unemployment and political instability. “If the market is over its skis, then what we’re likely to see is a race to the bottom of these dark monetization patterns. We were promised curing cancer, but we’re getting AI slop.”

    AI has already led to significant layoffs across a number of industries, including at Amazon, which announced it would slash 14,000 white-collar jobs last week. And Americans appear concerned that it’s just the beginning, with more than two thirds of respondents in a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll worrying that swaths of the workforce could be permanently displaced.

    That’s for good reason: A report released by Senator Bernie Sanders last month (which ironically made use of ChatGPT) estimated that close to 100 million American jobs could be eliminated in 10 years by AI. Other reports have reached similar conclusions. And while not all the data is quite so pessimistic, purveyors of the technology themselves have warned about looming job losses: Dario Amodei, CEO of AI company Anthropic, cautioned in an interview with Axios earlier this year that the tech could get rid of half of all entry-level white-collar jobs. As he described the scenario, AI could mean “cancer is cured, the economy grows at 10% a year, the budget is balanced—and 20% of people don’t have jobs.”

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    Eric Lutz

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  • WIRED Roundup: Alpha School, Grokipedia, and Real Estate AI Videos

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    The thing that gets me, and I’m really curious about your take on this, Brian, as someone with children, that the guides these people that were brought in, they were actually in the room with students helping them with any technological glitches or settling anything that’s happening in the real world. While some had experience as educators, others did not, and not only that, Alpha actually had often targeted individuals without teaching backgrounds, going instead for folks that were in the entrepreneurship space, because nothing screams early childhood education like Series A funding. I’m so confused as to what the entire point of this is.

    Brian Barrett: It feels reductive, right? It is the idea that school is about grades and grades are about numbers and coding is all that matters. When obviously school is about learning to interact with people, it is a social thing as much as it is a numbers thing. I think too, how do you quantify and nextify art class and finger painting and all the other things that are good for social development, good for mental development that aren’t crunching numbers. And it just feels like that’s not part of the calculus here, which is a shame.

    Leah Feiger: And we didn’t even get into a core WIRED area of interest, which is surveillance issues. These kids are being surveilled.

    Brian Barrett: Yeah. There was a report that our reporter, Todd found that there was eye tracking software involved in this. Again, for some parents, I am sure that this is great, and again, Alpha School has a lot of parents who say, “Yes, this is what we want.” They’ve got a lot of great reviews, a lot of glowing press. What we found in Brownsville was not that.

    Leah Feiger: And as that last little surveillance anecdote, there’s one piece of reporting that Todd shared that really freaked me out of this one student who at home received a notification that she’d been flagged for an anti-pattern or a distraction by the Alpha system while she was working on her schoolwork. It turns out she says that Alpha system sent a video of her in her pajamas, taken from the computer’s webcam that showed her talking to her younger sister. Again, she’s at home. This doesn’t end the minute that they leave the classroom either. This is so beyond. And I’m sure there’s the case that everyone’s making, oh, they’re collecting data. This is a holistic experience. That’s still creepy to me.

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    Brian Barrett, Leah Feiger

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  • AI ‘Consulting’ Services Can Help Smaller Businesses, But Risks Persist

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    Consultancy firms can be very useful for growing businesses — giving new companies guidance or financial or management advice when needed, backed by experience and expertise. But for smaller enterprises with narrow margins, the cost of hiring top-rank consulting firms can be financially out of reach.

    Enter AI, according to a new report at Business Insider. In much the same way that generative AI tools promise to add, say, coding expertise to a small team, or free up workers from mundane tasks to engage in more productive work, AI-powered “consultant” apps are emerging from a suite of Silicon Valley startups, with the goal of helping small firms carry out market research, analyze data or to smooth and optimize their business operations. 

    Business Insider quotes Thomson Nguyen, cofounder and managing partner of Wyoming-based venture capital outfit Saga, on the phenomenon. These new AI consultancy players won’t be challenging big consulting firms any time soon, he thinks, simply because if you’re a “Fortune 500 company building AI infrastructure for your call center, you’ll still hire the Big Four,” because you’ll have the budget set aside and experience in working with third-party consultancies. But the real target for these startups is smaller companies, making under $100 million a year, who are too small to hire a McKinsey or Deloitte, for example. 

    The news outlet notes that AI apps like PromptQL, from Bangalore-based AI unicorn Hasura, are directly set up to tackle typical consultant roles — including analyzing a company’s internal data, and continually adapting over time. PromptQL even has a team of engineers that’ll help craft an AI analyst agent specifically to meet the needs of a client company. Co-founder and CEO Tanmai Gopal admitted to Business Insider that it’s “not as good as a McKinsey consultant,” but it has the benefits of being “instant.” That’s the very opposite of the sometimes protracted process where a consultant learns about their client company before tackling an analysis, since an AI can just be switched on and immediately wrestle with data. 

    Among the kind of tasks that AI consultancy startups are tackling, starting and managing call centers and customer service automation is a trend, as are firms that aim at integrating software and AI into client company’s operations, as well as firms building management and operational AI systems. There are even AI tools targeting executive coaching.

    This may not be a surprise, considering that big tech names like Salesforce are already selling their own agent-based AI services aimed at automating the sales process and call center operations. AI startups offering similar options and targeting smaller companies as clients is natural.

    Gopal told Business Insider that for now these AI consultancy tools aren’t really replacing human workers — echoing many an AI evangelist’s argument about the role of AI in the workplace. Human workers have more diverse skills, and for now it’s as much about the “network” of colleagues that a human worker can access as it is about their advice. 

    What’s the takeaway from this for your company?

    If you find yourself struggling with an expertise gap, you may find that there’s an AI-powered consulting tool out there that will fit your needs.

    But as with most AI tools, perhaps the thing to remember is that (just as with human consultants, though perhaps less obviously) AIs are not infallible. AI systems regularly make mistakes, and can hallucinate analysis and advice that they then pass off as meaningful, just as if it was real advice. You’ll have seen this by now, perhaps when you asked an AI to write a snippet of code for you. The AI may insist the code works, but when you say “No, it doesn’t,” the AI may say “Oh! You’re right!” and offer a fix. Whenever you’re using AI it’s probably best to run the results past a human worker before making, say, a business critical decision based on an AI consultant’s analysis. 

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    Kit Eaton

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  • Tech Bros Are Obsessed With Statue-Maxxing

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    If the Statue of Liberty is a symbol of America at its best, welcoming any and all seeking freedom and opportunity to our shores, it’s only right that we get a statue that represents the worst of America. Luckily, the tech bros are on it. According to Bloomberg, many Republican-aligned tech investors are trying to build new statues across America to prepare us for our own Fall of the Empire era.

    Per the report, there are at least four Silicon Valley dopes looking to become modern-day Monuments Men. There’s Bitcoin mining enthusiast Ross Calvin, who has his sights set on building a 450-foot-tall statue of the Greek god Prometheus on Alcatraz island; Palantir co-founder and Peter Thiel pal Joe Lonsdale, who has made a habit of commissioning sculptures that evoke “classical aesthetics”; and angel investor Elad Gil, who started a project called Monumental with the goal of building large statues; and Mo Mahmood, the founder of More Monuments.

    Calvin’s plan seems to be the most considered of the bunch. He is reportedly planning on lobbying Donald Trump’s team with a pitch to get Alcatraz reclassified as a national monument instead of a national park. That designation would allow him to construct the 30-story tall carving of Prometheus, which will apparently be accompanied by a technology museum. The statue, which would dwarf the 305-foot Statue of Liberty, would be made of nickel-bronze alloy and positioned so it’s visible from the entire Bay Area. It would also come in at a cost of $450 million.

    Lonsdale seems slightly less obsessed with scale, but is deeply interested in aesthetics. Per Bloomberg, he’s already commissioned (regular-sized) sculptures of the Greek goddesses known as the Three Graces and a neoclassical bust of Bari Weiss that sits on display at the University of Austin, which Lonsdale co-founded. Lonsdale, who calls himself a “classical aestheticist,” is also a backer of the National Monuments Foundation, run by Rodney Mims Cook Jr., who previously served as Trump’s appointee to the US Commission of Fine Arts.

    Gil has his own venture in this space, called Monumental, which he pitched about a year ago on an appearance on the podcast “My First Million.” He’s really more the money guy here, as he stated during the interview that he’s looking to finance someone who can make the dream a reality, but his plan is to build statues that are “an ode to the future,” which he claims is something civilizations at their peak always do. (What happens after the peak, has anyone checked?) Per Bloomberg, he’s a bit less obsessed with “Western” values than the others, and wants to pull inspiration from structures like Aztec and Mayan temples, the Sphinx of Giza, and the Great Wall of China.

    Then there’s Mahmood, who has the biggest ambition in terms of size. He wants to build a 650-foot statue of George Washington—though for now, he’s apparently settling for crafting a 50-foot version that is reportedly set to be unveiled on July 4, 2026, to mark America’s 250th year. He does, to his credit, already have one successful project under his belt. Per Bloomberg, his company built a 54-foot statue of an oil derrick, which is now the largest monument in the Austin, Texas area.

    While these seem like deeply ridiculous plans and, frankly, people, they may well have an ally in the White House. Trump has already set aside $40 million to build a National Garden of American Heroes, which is slated to contain more than 250 statues of iconic American figures. He also reportedly has plans to build a triumphal arch in Washington, D.C. that would stand across from the Lincoln Memorial on the other side of the Potomac River. Plus, it’s not like he’s exactly opposed to deeply gaudy-looking constructions, so, he’s kinda the audience for this kind of thing.

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    AJ Dellinger

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  • Here’s How LinkedIn Co-Founder Reid Hoffman Says AI Needs to Be Regulated

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    Regulation can be good for technology, so long as it’s done thoughtfully, according to LinkedIn co-founder, investor, and AI-enthusiast Reid Hoffman. Speaking on the heels of a pitch event in San Francisco called Entrepreneurs First Demo Day, he compared AI regulation to seatbelts in vehicles.

    “Seatbelts are a good thing, relative to the fact that regulatory stuff can have a positive impact on society, technology evolution. Now doing it smart in the right way is important,” he tells Inc. “You don’t try to solve everything before you get on the road. You get on the road and then solve it as you go,” he adds. His voice joins a chorus of others from big names in tech speaking up about how much—or in the case of legendary investor Marc Andreessen and companies like Meta—how little regulation they support.

    Hoffman sits on the board of Entrepreneurs First, an international talent investment firm that hosts incubator-style programs and related annual pitch competitions. Those events are called Demo Days, and the most recent took place in San Francisco on Wednesday. Hoffman joined EF’s board after leading a significant round of investment in the company in 2017 through his capacity at venture capital firm Greylock Partners. 

    Hoffman was not on the ground at Demo Day this year, but another big name in tech was: Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark was the keynote speaker in conversation with Entrepreneurs First CEO Alice Bentinck. 

    Just a few days prior, Clark had made waves for commentary he gave at The Curve conference in Berkeley, California, and later published in essay form in his newsletter. He compared AI to a “mysterious creature” of humanity’s own creation. He said he was optimistic about its potential as well as appropriately afraid of it, especially if AI’s goals are not absolutely aligned with humanity’s. And finally, he ended by emphasizing the need for conversations with a broad swathe of society to help craft a “policy solution.”

    “There will surely be some crisis,” Clark notes in his blog. “We must be ready to meet that moment both with policy ideas, and with a pre-existing transparency regime which has been built by listening and responding to people.”

    In response to the post, U.S. AI and crypto czar David Sacks accused Anthropic of fearmongering. 

    Hoffman’s take, which he wrote about in his recent book, is by no means anti-regulation, but does differ somewhat from Clark’s. “In the book that I published in January, Superagency, part of what I was arguing for within AI is iterative deployment and development,” he tells Inc. “We do the regulatory thing, but we do it in response to what we can actually see versus imagination of what [could] happen,” he adds.

    AI has never been more topical, especially among aspiring entrepreneurs. This week at Demo Day in San Francisco, founders from 20 different startups pitched more than 200 tech investors, among them big name firms like a16z, Khosla Ventures, Paladin Capital, Insight Partners and Engine Ventures, in hopes of landing as much as $7 million in seed funding. It represented the culmination of some six months of work the founders had put in during Entrepreneurs First’s incubator-style program. On the lips of most of those entrepreneurs was AI.

    “The majority of the companies that were pitching yesterday—85 to 90 percent—are all using AI in some way. Some of them are building novel AI models, others are creating wrappers or scaffolding around existing AI models,” says Bentinck. “If you look at what early stage investors want to put capital behind, they see this enormous opportunity in the new AI economy.”

    Originally founded in London, Entrepreneurs First started off as a nonprofit in 2011 before becoming the investment vehicle it is today, starting in 2015. The company expanded overseas to offer programming in San Francisco at the start of 2024, and continues to run cohorts across Europe, India and the U.S.

    Entrepreneurs First functions something like an incubator, although Bentinck says EF thinks of itself more as a “talent investing studio.” It searches out individuals, usually with technical backgrounds, who also possess certain qualities related to pacing, productivity, determination, and even aggression, Bentinck says—qualities that alert EF that these individuals may outperform their peers. EF then guides them through the process of building a startup including helping them ideate if they don’t already have an idea and introducing them to potential co-founders.

    “We find exceptional individuals, pre-team, pre-idea, pre-company. Really all that we’re looking for is their entrepreneurial potential and then we run them through a process that helps them build a startup from scratch,” Bentinck says.

    The group that pitched this week included the top tier companies from EF’s European and U.S. programs. Each of these teams had been selected by EF and received $250,000 in pre-seed investment in exchange for 8 percent equity. 

    “That’s the culmination of EF and we then send them off into the wild to build enormous companies,” Bentinck says.

    Fast Company’s Mark Sullivan contributed reporting.

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    Chloe Aiello

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  • AMD says Oracle is committing to widespread use of new AI chips

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    By Ian King, Bloomberg

    Advanced Micro Devices Inc., Nvidia Corp.’s nearest rival in AI processors, said Oracle Corp. will deploy a large batch of its forthcoming MI450 chips next year.

    Oracle will put 50,000 of the semiconductors in data center computers starting in the third quarter of 2026, according to a statement Tuesday. The systems will contain AMD processors and networking components.

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    Bloomberg

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  • Meta Tells Its Metaverse Workers to Use AI to ‘Go 5X Faster’

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    A Meta executive in charge of building the company’s metaverse products told employees that they should be using AI to “go 5X faster” according to an internal message obtained by 404 Media.

    “Metaverse AI4P: Think 5X, not 5%,” the message, posted by Vishal Shah, Meta’s VP of Metaverse, said (AI4P is AI for Productivity). The idea is that programmers should be using AI to work five times more efficiently than they are currently working—not just using it to go 5 percent more efficiently.

    “Our goal is simple yet audacious: make Al a habit, not a novelty. This means prioritizing training and adoption for everyone, so that using Al becomes second nature—just like any other tool we rely on,” the message read. “It also means integrating Al into every major codebase and workflow.” Shah added that this doesn’t just apply to engineers. “I want to see PMs, designers, and [cross functional] partners rolling up their sleeves and building prototypes, fixing bugs, and pushing the boundaries of what’s possible,” he wrote. “I want to see us go 5X faster by eliminating the frictions that slow us down. And 5X faster to get to how our products feel much more quickly. Imagine a world where anyone can rapidly prototype an idea, and feedback loops are measured in hours—not weeks. That’s the future we’re building.”

    Meta’s metaverse products, which CEO Mark Zuckerberg renamed the company to highlight, have been a colossal time sink and money pit, with the company spending tens of billions of dollars developing a product that relatively few people use.

    Zuckerberg has spoken extensively about how he expects AI agents to write most of Meta’s code within the next 12 to 18 months. The company also recently decided that job candidates would be allowed to use AI as part of their coding tests during job interviews. But Shah’s message highlights a fear that workers have had for quite some time: That bosses are not just expecting to replace workers with AI, they are expecting those who remain to use AI to become far more efficient. The implicit assumption is that the work that skilled humans do without AI simply isn’t good enough.

    At this point, most tech giants are pushing AI on their workforces. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy told employees in July that he expects AI to completely transform how the company works—and lead to job loss. “In the next few years, we expect that this will reduce our total corporate workforce as we get efficiency gains from using AI extensively across the company,” he said.

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    Jason Koebler

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  • Tri-Valley is one of the fastest growing regions in the Bay Area

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    Since the 1970s, the Tri-Valley region of the Bay Area has seen significant growth. In places like Dublin and San Ramon, the population has tripled. Meanwhile, other cities in the region have seen their populations double. The Tri-Valley is nestled into the Diablo Mountain Range and is made up of the cities of Pleasanton, Livermore, Dublin, San Ramon and Danville and the surrounding communities. “We saw a growth that changed the community,” said Alameda County District 1 Supervisor David Haubert. “We literally saw Dublin change.”Haubert and his family moved to Dublin 25 years ago. They raised their daughters there and were active in the community, including joining the school board. Haubert went on to become the mayor of Dublin before becoming a county supervisor. “When I left as mayor in the city of Dublin, I said, ‘We’ve seen a lot of great things to happen. But, I want you to know our best days are yet to come.’ Dublin has continued to progress, I say we have even greater days yet to come,” Haubert said. Some of the reasons people are choosing to move to the Tri-Valley include the open spaces, great school districts, and cheaper housing costs. Nearly 10,000 single-family homes have been built in the Tri-Valley in the last 15 years. Developer Trumark Homes currently has approvals for more than 1,500 homes in the Tri-Valley, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. One of Trumark’s biggest developments is Francis Ranch in Dublin. That development has 573 homes under construction. And as the population has grown, communities have seen their demographics shift as well. “Twenty years back, there were not that many people from the South Asian community,” said Prasad Ramakrishnan. Ramakrishnan moved with his family from Fremont to San Ramon two decades ago. He still commutes to Silicon Valley for work, but was drawn to the open spaces and parks in the Tri-Valley.Ramakrishnan is on the board of the Indian Community Center and says the diversity of San Ramon is one of the reasons he’s grown to love the city so much. According to census data, 23% of residents in San Ramon identify as Indian, including Ramakrishnan.”It doesn’t matter where you’re from. All of us are humans, let’s all get together. San Ramon creates that kind of an environment where you have people from different ethnic backgrounds kind of coming together,” Ramakrishnan said. “We celebrate Diwali, we celebrate Christmas, we celebrate the Muslim functions.”But of course, growth doesn’t come without growing pains. Many of those pains can be found along the highways. “680 is the only real highway from here to South Bay. These are called bedroom communities, and then they work in the South Bay. Giving them an easy way by which to get there would be a nice thing,” Ramakrishnan said. However, Haubert is betting on a future without so many people having to commute outside of the Tri-Valley for work. “I truly believe businesses will locate here,” Haubert said. “I understand that’s often the decision of the CEO. So a lot of CEOs live in Silicon Valley, but a lot of future CEOs live in the Tri-Valley. That’s my belief.”See more coverage of top California stories here | Download our app | Subscribe to our morning newsletter | Find us on YouTube here and subscribe to our channel

    DUBLIN, Calif. —

    Since the 1970s, the Tri-Valley region of the Bay Area has seen significant growth. In places like Dublin and San Ramon, the population has tripled. Meanwhile, other cities in the region have seen their populations double.

    The Tri-Valley is nestled into the Diablo Mountain Range and is made up of the cities of Pleasanton, Livermore, Dublin, San Ramon and Danville and the surrounding communities.

    “We saw a growth that changed the community,” said Alameda County District 1 Supervisor David Haubert. “We literally saw Dublin change.”

    Haubert and his family moved to Dublin 25 years ago. They raised their daughters there and were active in the community, including joining the school board. Haubert went on to become the mayor of Dublin before becoming a county supervisor.

    “When I left as mayor in the city of Dublin, I said, ‘We’ve seen a lot of great things to happen. But, I want you to know our best days are yet to come.’ Dublin has continued to progress, I say we have even greater days yet to come,” Haubert said.

    Some of the reasons people are choosing to move to the Tri-Valley include the open spaces, great school districts, and cheaper housing costs. Nearly 10,000 single-family homes have been built in the Tri-Valley in the last 15 years.

    Developer Trumark Homes currently has approvals for more than 1,500 homes in the Tri-Valley, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

    One of Trumark’s biggest developments is Francis Ranch in Dublin. That development has 573 homes under construction. And as the population has grown, communities have seen their demographics shift as well.

    “Twenty years back, there were not that many people from the South Asian community,” said Prasad Ramakrishnan. Ramakrishnan moved with his family from Fremont to San Ramon two decades ago. He still commutes to Silicon Valley for work, but was drawn to the open spaces and parks in the Tri-Valley.

    Ramakrishnan is on the board of the Indian Community Center and says the diversity of San Ramon is one of the reasons he’s grown to love the city so much. According to census data, 23% of residents in San Ramon identify as Indian, including Ramakrishnan.

    “It doesn’t matter where you’re from. All of us are humans, let’s all get together. San Ramon creates that kind of an environment where you have people from different ethnic backgrounds kind of coming together,” Ramakrishnan said. “We celebrate Diwali, we celebrate Christmas, we celebrate the Muslim functions.”

    But of course, growth doesn’t come without growing pains. Many of those pains can be found along the highways.

    “680 is the only real highway from here to South Bay. These are called bedroom communities, and then they work in the South Bay. Giving them an easy way by which to get there would be a nice thing,” Ramakrishnan said.

    However, Haubert is betting on a future without so many people having to commute outside of the Tri-Valley for work.

    “I truly believe businesses will locate here,” Haubert said. “I understand that’s often the decision of the CEO. So a lot of CEOs live in Silicon Valley, but a lot of future CEOs live in the Tri-Valley. That’s my belief.”

    See more coverage of top California stories here | Download our app | Subscribe to our morning newsletter | Find us on YouTube here and subscribe to our channel

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  • Marissa Mayer Is Dissolving Her Sunshine Startup Lab

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    Sunshine, the consumer AI startup founded by former Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer in 2018, has seen brighter days.

    The small startup is shutting down, and its assets are being sold to a new entity incorporated by Mayer called Dazzle, according to an email viewed by WIRED. Mayer sent the email to Sunshine shareholders on September 17, informing them that Dazzle has officially incorporated and is ready to acquire Sunshine’s holdings.

    The deal requires approval from shareholders, including Sunshine cofounder Enrique Muñoz Torres, Norwest Venture Partners, Felicis Partners, Ron Conway’s SV Angel, the PR firm Archetype Agency, and others. As of Sunday afternoon, 99 percent of shareholders had signed, according to sources close to the situation. Mayer is the company’s largest shareholder and investor.

    The email did not elaborate on what Dazzle’s purpose will be, but sources tell WIRED that Mayer is eyeing a new kind of AI personal assistant. Sunshine’s roughly 15 employees are expecting to find new roles at Dazzle, sources say.

    “After careful consideration, Sunshine’s management, and 99.99% of its shareholders, determined the strongest path forward for the company was to sell to Dazzle AI, a new company already incorporated and with committed funding,” Mayer said through a spokesperson. “As Sunshine’s largest investor, shareholder, and CEO, Marissa is proud of what the team built and looks forward to carrying that momentum into new opportunities around Dazzle.”

    Mayer founded Sunshine, originally called Lumi Labs, in 2018 after her five-year turnaround attempt at Yahoo. Prior to becoming CEO of Yahoo, Mayer had a storied career at Google, where she was employee number 20. Mayer designed the interface for Google Search and helped develop Google Maps and Google AdWords.

    The idea for Sunshine’s first product, an app for managing contacts, stemmed from Mayer’s own experience tapping into her deep network of Silicon Valley luminaries as she was trying to launch her company. That app, Sunshine Contacts, launched in 2020. By that point, the startup had raised $20 million in venture capital funding, in addition to Mayer’s personal contributions.

    Early on, the Sunshine app was plagued by complaints that it potentially violated user privacy. The app, which used AI to identify and merge duplicate people in your phone’s contacts list, was also pulling in information from Whitepages to automatically add home addresses to contacts.

    In 2024, Sunshine launched a photo sharing app called Shine. Like Sunshine Contacts, Shine was widely viewed as a flop.

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    Lauren Goode, Zoë Schiffer

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  • Is Silicon Valley Still the Tech Capital?

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    On this special episode of Uncanny Valley recorded in front of a live audience in San Francisco, our hosts discuss Silicon Valley’s history and future.

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    Lauren Goode, Katie Drummond, Jason Kehe

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  • Tech Billionaires Already Captured the White House. They Still Want to Be Kings

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    During our conversation, Brown compared Praxis to Israel—minus a world war and a holocaust, of course. “There were these stateless people who were scattered,” he says, and they had “this idea of Judea and building a state and returning to the OG homeland.” (Srinivasan has been even more direct in the past, saying, “What I’m really calling for is something like tech Zionism.”)

    Of course, the beauty of a network state is that it can embody “the West” without actually having to be there. In addition to the Vandenberg location, Praxis announced that its team would be traveling to Morocco, Japan, and the Dominican Republic, among other countries, to explore the possibility of establishing an SEZ. While Brown says he does not consider Morocco to be Western, Praxis is willing to work with countries that are willing to give it land. Like Ion, Brown promises an influx of companies and tech talent that “can radically benefit” those places, boosting property values and creating jobs for local residents. It is unclear if those Moroccan residents would be considered “citizens” in a Praxian SEZ. In the meantime, through an initiative called Praxis Development, the group plans to buy up residential properties where its members can live as a stepping stone toward “real territory, real assets, and real power.”

    “This is a colonial project, aimed at tech empire,” says Gil Duran, a former political consultant and author of the independent newsletter The Nerd Reich. “It sounds like colonization 2.0. When you go to another person’s country and create your own country there, no matter your excuse, no matter your rationale.”

    Or, as the Praxis X account posted on September 1, “Cyberpunk East India Company.”

    The most evolved version of the SEZ strategy is Próspera, a charter community, backed by Pronomos Capital, on the island of Roatán in Honduras. It has an arbitration system, low taxes, and a code of rules. (Vitalia, Ion’s original project, considered setting up a permanent location within Próspera.)

    Próspera’s leaders say they do not consider it a network state, that their goal is “city-scale development that advances human progress and prosperity—within Honduran sovereignty and law.” The Honduran government, then led by Juan Orlando Hernández Alvarado, granted the city its charter in 2017. But Hernández was arrested in 2022 for drug trafficking (he has since been convicted), and the new government repealed Próspera’s SEZ status, alleging that these types of zones violated the country’s sovereignty. Próspera then filed an $11 billion lawsuit against the Honduran government, alleging that the government had failed to “honor its guarantees of legal stability.” The case is ongoing.

    Ion, for his part, says that he “would approach different things differently” in Viva City.

    Back at Viva Frontier Tower, after the morning rave and a full day of sessions on health and longevity, Ion, now dressed in a T-shirt and jeans, leads a few dozen attendees on a tour of his pop-up fiefdom. While the AI-generated images on the group’s website portray a semitropical seaside paradise that looks like a cross between Monaco and Atlantis, in real life, the WeWork turned “vertical village” turned temporary network state is in various states of repair.

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    Vittoria Elliott

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  • What to know about the H-1B visa Trump has targeted with $100,000 fees, generating confusion, fear

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    By PAUL WISEMAN, BARBARA ORTUTAY and PIYUSH NAGPAL, Associated Press

    The Trump administration’s abrupt decision to slap a $100,000 fee on H-1B visas has stunned and confused employers, students and workers from the United States to India and beyond.

    Since announcing the decision Friday, the White House has tried to reassure jittery companies that the fee does not apply to existing visa holders and that their H-1B employees traveling abroad will not be stranded, unable to re-enter the United States without coming up with $100,000. The new policy took effect at 12:01 a.m. Eastern Sunday.

    RELATED: Donald Trump’s pricey H-1B visas alarm prospects aiming for Silicon Valley jobs

    Despite the effort at reassurance, “there’s still some folks out there recommending to their H-1B employees that they not travel right now until it’s a little clearer,” Leon Rodriguez, a partner at the Seyfarth law firm who was director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services in the Obama administration.

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    Associated Press

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  • WIRED global editorial director on tech’s growing political power under Trump

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    For the first time in its history, WIRED is dedicating an issue to politics, citing concerns about the tech industry’s alignment with President Trump. Katie Drummond, the magazine’s global editorial director, explains what this shift means for Silicon Valley and for readers.

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