Silicon Valley Enters a New Era with AI Investment Surge

Early in his term, President Trump made a clear declaration of support for the technology sector by unveiling the Stargate Project, a bold plan to channel $500 billion in private funding over four years into building artificial intelligence infrastructure. To put this in perspective, the Apollo program, which landed humans on the moon, cost approximately $300 billion in today's dollars over 13 years. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman tempered expectations, noting that while the figure seems enormous now, it likely will not in the near future.

Over the past decade observing Silicon Valley—from engineering roles to journalistic coverage—the industry has moved into a new phase. Historically supported by a favorable U.S. government stance, the current administration has signaled an intent to empower the tech sector further. The Stargate initiative is one example; another is a recently passed Republican tax bill that would prevent states from imposing AI regulations for the next decade.

Today’s leading AI corporations are evolving beyond multinational enterprises, taking on the characteristics of powerful modern empires. Backed by federal government support, these companies are positioned to influence wide-ranging areas of society, including political systems, economic frameworks, and scientific research.

A decade ago, Silicon Valley’s influence was already growing, fueled by ambitious missions such as Google’s goal to ‘organize the world’s information.’ Now, with the pursuit of artificial general intelligence (AGI), these missions have taken on a grander, almost civilizational tone. Firms claim they will guide humanity into a new enlightened era, asserting unique scientific and ethical authority over a technology they warn could lead to disaster if developed first by rivals like China. Dario Amodei, CEO of the AI startup Anthropic, has emphasized that AI companies in democracies must develop superior models to maintain a competitive edge.

While such rhetoric may seem overstated—and Silicon Valley has a track record of unfulfilled promises—the belief that AGI is imminent and will generate unprecedented prosperity is already driving companies to amass vast capital, control critical data and energy resources, and construct massive data centers. These developments contribute to the growing climate crisis and reinforce the tech sector’s dominance, potentially undermining human rights long after the initial optimism fades.

The race for AGI is also enabling companies to collect unprecedented amounts of data, raising serious concerns about privacy and intellectual property. For instance, before expanding into generative AI, Meta had accumulated data from nearly four billion accounts but now deems that insufficient. To fuel its AI models, the company has scraped internet content with minimal regard for copyright and even contemplated acquiring the publisher Simon & Schuster to secure the necessary data.