what you're seeing and what you'll see even more now is this incentive for Silicon Valley, who has been really reticent to put money into chips, really reticent to put money into hardware. They're going to get pulled into investing in this space because there's no choice.
By late 2025, the core claim of the prediction has clearly materialized: venture and growth investors centered in the U.S./Silicon Valley have sharply increased capital allocations to semiconductor and AI‑hardware startups compared with the pre‑2023 period.
Key evidence:
- Large jump in U.S. chip‑startup funding: Crunchbase data shows U.S. semiconductor startups raised nearly $3B in 2024, up from $1.3B in 2023—a 123% increase and the strongest year since the 2021 peak of $3.2B.(ainad.net) That is a substantial reallocation of VC money toward chips, even as overall global semiconductor VC dollars fell.
- AI chips and hardware as a major VC focus: A market summary of AI‑chip funding reports that U.S. chip startups saw nearly $3B in 2024 (again, +123% vs 2023) and notes that semiconductor and AI hardware companies alone took in about $3B across 75 companies in Q4 2024.(quickmarketpitch.com) This is precisely the kind of sustained, broad‑based investment surge Chamath described.
- Multiple very large late‑stage rounds into AI‑chip and infrastructure startups: Examples since 2024 include Groq’s ~$640M Series D, Tenstorrent’s ~$693M Series D, Enfabrica’s $115M Series C, Etched’s $120M Series A, and EnCharge AI’s $100M Series B, all building AI accelerators or related hardware.(quickmarketpitch.com) In 2025, Cerebras Systems raised a $1.1B Series G for its wafer‑scale AI chips, while firms like Rebellions, Rivos, Celestial AI, and Axelera AI each raised rounds in the $200M+ class for next‑gen AI accelerators and photonics‑based chip interconnects.(techstartups.com) These are exactly the kind of big growth‑stage bets that earlier Silicon Valley investors were often reluctant to make in semis.
- Mainstream VC and growth investors leading these deals: Many of the above rounds are led or heavily participated in by major venture and growth investors such as Fidelity, BlackRock, Tiger Global, Spark Capital, and others—classic Silicon Valley and global growth‑equity players now writing large checks into chip and hardware companies.(foundlanes.com) That behavior is consistent with being “pulled into” the space rather than staying software‑only.
- Dedicated capital pools for frontier hardware: Funds like America’s Frontier Fund are raising hundreds of millions of dollars, in part with U.S. government backing, specifically to back frontier technologies including semiconductors and AI hardware, reflecting institutional recognition that this is now a core investment area rather than a niche.(businessinsider.com)
The prediction’s nominal horizon extends to roughly 2027, but its falsifiable content is that, compared with a historically more hesitant stance toward chips and hardware, Silicon Valley venture and growth investors would significantly increase investment in semiconductor and related AI‑infrastructure startups. By 2023–2025 we already observe exactly that: dollar volumes more than doubling in the U.S., a wave of large late‑stage hardware rounds, and top‑tier VCs heavily involved. Later developments may change magnitudes, but they cannot undo the fact that this surge has already occurred. Therefore, the prediction is best classified as right.