Is Miami destined to be the new Wall Street, and Austin the next Silicon Valley? “All-in” podcaster and White House AI czar David Sacks thinks so.
Sacks kicked off a New Year’s social media debate by declaring that Miami will overtake New York as the nation’s financial capital — and that Austin is poised to replace San Francisco as the center of tech.
“As a response to socialism, Miami will replace NYC as the finance capital and Austin will replace SF as the tech capital,” Sacks wrote in a January 1 post on X that ricocheted through tech and venture circles, drawing cheers from anti-coastal contrarians and sharp pushback from defenders of the old hubs.
Linda Yaccarino, the former CEO of X, responded to Sacks with the word “Miami” along with a fire emoji.
Garry Tan, who runs Y Combinator, the influential startup accelerator behind Airbnb, Stripe, and Dropbox, weighed in, saying the firm hasn’t expanded beyond San Francisco because founders are still much more likely to build successful, product-market-fit unicorns in the region.
Tan recently said he would consider opening an Austin outpost if California moves forward with a proposed billionaire tax. The ballot measure would impose a one-time 5% levy on California residents with assets exceeding $1 billion and could go before voters in November if it qualifies.
Sacks urged Tan to reconsider, arguing that a Y Combinator outpost in Austin could become a “self-fulfilling prophecy.” “If YC and others support Austin, it will be successful,” Sacks said.
Musk replied simply, “Yes.” The Pittsburgh-based venture capitalist Brandon Brooks said an Austin outpost “would be the biggest shift for the startup ecosystem in history.”
Sacks is a venture capitalist, podcaster, and one of the earliest members of the so-called “PayPal mafia,” a group of PayPal employees who went on to positions of influence and power in Silicon Valley. His profile surged after he was appointed the Trump administration’s artificial intelligence and crypto czar.
Sacks’ own firm is already on the move. Craft Ventures said it opened an Austin office in December, with Sacks relocating to the city while the firm maintains offices in New York and San Francisco. Fellow Texans including Elon Musk, Michael Dell, and Joe Lonsdale, one of the cofounders of Palantir, welcomed him with posts.
Business Insider has reached out to the White House for comment.
A debate that raged during the pandemic
The argument Sacks is making isn’t new (one online poster on X even replied with a popular “Grand Theft Auto” video game meme showing the character saying “here we go again.”)
The debate flared during the pandemic, when remote work drove waves of coastal workers to Texas and Florida in search of more space, lower taxes, and a cheaper cost of living. Austin, in particular, ascended as companies like Tesla and Oracle moved into the region, and giants like Google and Facebook expanded their office footprints.
Sacks has also been making the case that high taxes, heavy regulation, and a leftward political turn are driving talent and capital out of legacy power centers like San Francisco and New York.
Sacks posted his prediction the same day Zohran Mamdani was inaugurated as New York City’s mayor, making history as the first socialist mayor to hold the office.
Lonsdale’s venture firm, 8VC, moved from San Francisco to Austin in 2020. Lonsdale tweeted at the time that the firm was moving for several reasons, among them: “Austin is far more tolerant of ideological diversity than SF.”
The hype hasn’t fully held. Some tech workers told Business Insider they later left or tried to leave Austin, citing brutal heat, traffic, overcrowding, and a tech scene that felt thinner than advertised.
Meanwhile, Thiel Capital is expanding in Miami as California’s proposed wealth tax looms.
On Wednesday, Thiel Capital, the private investment firm founded by the billionaire tech investor Peter Thiel said it has opened a new office in Miami.
If the proposal passes, the tax would apply retroactively to all California residents as of January 1, 2026.
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