How the world actually evolved (2020–2025)

Evidence the prediction did come true in an important sense (more dispersion):

• A major 2021 Rise of the Rest / PitchBook report found that seed and early‑stage VC going to Bay Area startups was on track to fall below 30% of the U.S. total for the first time in over a decade, while capital raised by VC funds outside the Bay Area/NYC/Boston rose ~700% over ten years to $21B, with more than 3,000 active investors now based outside those three hubs. (revolution.com)
• S&P Global’s 2024 analysis showed venture funding rounds in many inland states (Arkansas, Alabama, Iowa, Wyoming, etc.) more than doubled in value between 2019 and 2023, explicitly linking the shift to remote work and onshoring; meanwhile, California and New York saw declines in total VC dollars over that span (though from a much higher base). (spglobal.com)
• Multiple Sunbelt and interior metros—Austin, Miami, Denver, Nashville, Phoenix, Orlando, Albuquerque, the Raleigh–Durham Triangle—have grown tech employment and job postings far faster than traditional hubs, collectively adding large numbers of tech jobs and increasingly attracting big‑tech offices. (thebigjob.com)
• Brookings’ pandemic‑era work on tech geography finds that while the eight “superstar” metros still dominate, there has been modest but real diffusion of tech jobs, startups, and job postings to a wider set of smaller and lower‑cost metros since 2020, with superstar metros’ share of tech job postings falling from ~40% (2016) to about 31% by late 2021 and rising‑star/interior cities gaining share. (brookings.edu)
• Remote work and digital nomadism became structural: remote/hybrid work has stabilized rather than reverting to pre‑COVID norms, remote postings (about 8% of LinkedIn jobs) attract roughly 35% of applications, and U.S. digital nomads more than doubled from 2019 to over 18M in 2024—expanding tech‑adjacent opportunities in many locations where major employers have no office. (businessinsider.com)

These trends support Chamath’s intuition that COVID and remote work would create meaningful new tech and startup opportunity in many more U.S. cities, not just in Silicon Valley.

Evidence the prediction did not fully come true as framed (“away from” California/Silicon Valley, wealth creation):

• Venture capital and startup wealth have actually re‑concentrated in California—especially the Bay Area—since the initial 2020–2021 dispersion:
  • Crunchbase reported that by 2022, California startups were again taking ~51% of all U.S. VC dollars, up from ~47% in 2019. (news.crunchbase.com)
  • By 2023, companies in the San Francisco Bay Area alone attracted about 41% of all U.S. startup funding. (news.crunchbase.com)
  • Carta data for Q3 2023–Q2 2024 show California accounting for 51.7% of all VC raised on its platform; the next‑largest state (New York) had only ~11%. (carta.com)
  • Crunchbase figures summarized in early 2025 show Bay Area startups taking $90B of $178B in U.S. VC funding in 2024 (≈57% of the national total), driven largely by AI mega‑rounds (OpenAI, Anthropic, Databricks, xAI, etc.). (techcrunch.com)
  • A 2025 analysis notes that roughly 52% of all U.S. startup investment in early 2025 was going to California startups, up from 47% in 2023—i.e., California’s share of capital is rising, not falling. (consultancycircle.com)
• The 2025 Silicon Valley Index still finds the region attracting ~$69B in VC in 2024 and generating tens of thousands of patents, even as some firms add capacity faster in Austin and Seattle. Separate JLL data show the Bay Area capturing nearly half of global AI VC in 2024 and driving a new local office‑demand boom. (lemonde.fr)
• On employment, Brookings and Census data describe a persistent “winner‑take‑most” geography: the eight superstar metros (including San Francisco and San Jose) still hold around 38%+ of U.S. tech jobs and accounted for about half of tech job growth in the first pandemic year, slightly increasing their employment share even amid remote‑work disruption. The Census Bureau’s 2023 mapping of high‑tech employment continues to show the largest, densest clusters on the coasts (San Jose, San Francisco, Boston, NYC, DC). (brookings.edu)
• VC itself has become more concentrated in a handful of top Silicon Valley–centric firms: by 2024, over half of all capital raised by U.S. VCs went to just nine firms, and the total number of active VC firms had fallen ~25% since 2021—reinforcing capital‑allocation power in the core hubs rather than diffusing it. (ft.com)

This evidence runs against the stronger reading of the prediction that opportunity and wealth creation would move away from the primary concentration in California/Silicon Valley in a durable way. Instead, California—especially the Bay Area—now commands at least as large a share of high‑end venture funding and frontier tech wealth (AI) as before COVID, sometimes larger.

Why the verdict is ‘ambiguous’

• If you interpret the claim narrowly as “Silicon Valley will no longer be the dominant center of tech wealth and startup funding; that will shift significantly to the rest of the country”, the data do not support it: California/Bay Area’s share of U.S. VC and AI capital is currently higher than pre‑pandemic, and superstar metros remain structurally dominant in tech jobs. (news.crunchbase.com)
• If you interpret it more broadly as “COVID and frustration with California will catalyze a meaningful redistribution of tech and startup opportunities across many more U.S. regions, enabled by remote work”, the prediction looks substantially right: there has been large absolute growth of VC, startups, and tech employment in inland and Sunbelt metros; thousands of new non‑coastal VC firms; and a lasting expansion of remote/hybrid roles that lets talent live far from Silicon Valley. (revolution.com)

Because both dynamics are true at the same time—more places have real tech opportunity now, yet capital and wealth are still (and in some respects more) concentrated in California/Silicon Valley—the outcome can’t be cleanly labeled simply “right” or “wrong.” That’s why the most accurate overall judgment is ambiguous.