Around 10,000 people in Silicon Valley have amassed fortunes north of $20 million thanks to the AI boom. Everyone else feels left behind. A venture capitalist paints a picture of an industry caught between gold rush euphoria and existential dread.
The mood in San Francisco is "frenetic," and the gap in financial outcomes is "the worst I've ever seen." That's how Deedy Das, a partner at venture capital firm Menlo Ventures, describes the current state of affairs at the epicenter of the AI industry. Society inside this tech bubble is warped, he says: what counts as wealthy anywhere else in the world is just average in San Francisco.
According to Das, a group of roughly 10,000 people have built fortunes well above $20 million over the past five years—employees at Anthropic, OpenAI, xAI, Meta TBD, and Nvidia, plus founders. OpenAI alone reportedly turned 75 people into multimillionaires worth $30 million each last fall.
Everyone outside that circle feels like they could spend an entire career at their "well-paying (but <$500k) job for their whole life and never get there." At the same time, layoffs are in full swing. Many software engineers feel like their core skills have become worthless, according to Das.
