Has Silicon Valley lost its monopoly over global tech?

SILICON VALLEY feels like a college reunion these days. As covid-19 restrictions are lifted across America, tech-bros (and the occasional tech-gal) who have not met in person in ages are high-fiving each other all over the place. Firms from Alphabet to Zynga are urging workers back to the office. Venture capitalists are flocking back from second homes by Lake Tahoe or ranches in Wyoming. Foreigners, who during the pandemic became a rarer sight in San Francisco than unicorns, can again be spotted south of Market Street, a popular pasture for startups valued at $1bn or more.The people look the same. Yet the place feels different. Your guest columnist, who is heading to Berlin after spending a total of 12 years, including all of the pandemic, in San Francisco over the past three decades, suspects that many returnees will feel like strangers in a strange land. Not because everyone seems suddenly obsessed with the decentralised “web3” (which they are) or because the valley has peaked (which it hasn’t). Silicon Valley has changed, and not just as a result of the pandemic.