Your Window Into the Innovation Economy

On a dusty stretch of desert outside Phoenix, Arizona, a skyline of steel frames and clean-room towers is rising. Not for apartments or office towers, but for a “city within a city” devoted to making the world’s most advanced semiconductors. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC), the linchpin of global chip supply, is pouring tens of billions into three new fabrication plants here, with help from the CHIPS and Science Act. The stakes are far larger than jobs or tax revenue. In a world where the tiniest chips control everything from F-35 fighters to the servers that train large language models, bringing this capacity onto U.S. soil is as much about deterrence as it is about commerce. As TSMC founder Morris Chang bluntly put it, “Globalization is almost dead. Free trade is almost dead.”

Join Alumni Ventures’ Managing Partner David Shapiro for an exclusive investor update on Blue Ivy Ventures, a fund built for the Yale community and its extended network.

The Problem With the Story We’ve Been Sold Silicon Valley loves a certain image: the hoodie-wearing college dropout who changes the world before being allowed to rent car. There’s even a fellowship that pays kids under 23 to quit school and start companies. The message? Younger is better. Here’s the problem: it’s just not true. Middle-aged founders crush young ones when it comes to building high-growth companies — it’s not even close. And I’m one of them. At the age of 49, I started Alumni Ventures, recently valued as a unicorn.*