Sam Altman feels Silicon Valley has lost its innovation culture, saying great research hasn’t happened there in a ‘long time’::“Before OpenAI, what was the last really great scientific breakthrough that came out of a Silicon Valley company?” Altman said on a Wednesday podcast.
Maybe not in the field of computer science, but silicon valley is home to a lot of hardware companies that are doing great research every year. Intel, Applied Materials, Lam Research, KLA-tencor, etc. That’s just in semiconductors. There’s also a ton of battery research in the area. Lots of consumer electronics too, particularly from Apple (I don’t like their products, but they have been the driving force behind advancements which have helped other fields, such as O2 blood sensors and hearing aids), but there are many others as well.
Silicon valley is not just software. Maybe by market cap it is, but in terms of hours of labor I don’t think software wins.