← The frontier
Technology & AIJun 30, 2026

Building tech in the world’s secret R&D hub

Apple. Anthropic. Disney Research. Google. Meta. Microsoft. NVIDIA. OpenAI. Few places outside Silicon Valley can claim R&D hubs from all of these companies. Fewer still are concentrated in a city of just over 400,000 people—roughly half…

Apple. Anthropic. Disney Research. Google. Meta. Microsoft. NVIDIA. OpenAI. Few places outside Silicon Valley can claim R&D hubs from all of these companies. Fewer still are concentrated in a city of just over 400,000 people—roughly half the size of San Francisco. Over the past…

The frontier is open to all. Sign in to learn this from first principles and save it to your knowledge base.