Uploaded June 2026 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
If the economic story of the last two decades was the consolidation of wealth and power in Silicon Valley, the story of the last few years is what tech billionaires want to do with it.
Since the summer of 2024, America’s richest have been on a building spree with few precedents in recent history. The scale of the investment, in the hopes of winning the AI race, is so vast that proponents have turned to previous eras of reckless extraction and technological advancement to describe it.
Senior Reporter Tim Murphy took a road trip to see these monstrosities in action: "These are the physical manifestations of that oligarchic consolidation."
If the economic story of the last two decades was the consolidation of wealth and power in Silicon Valley, the story of the last few years is what tech billionaires want to do with it.
Since the summer of 2024, America’s richest have been on a building spree with few precedents in recent history. The scale of the investment, in the hopes of winning the AI race, is so vast that proponents have turned to previous eras of reckless extraction and technological advancement to describe it.
Senior Reporter Tim Murphy took a road trip to see these monstrosities in action: "These are the physical manifestations of that oligarchic consolidation."
