Let’s hope it’s for the right reasons.

Silicon Valley got its name from semiconductor startups. About ten years ago, software companies dethronized them, getting all the money to do something else, that was still (often undeservedly) called “innovation”.

Now, says SemiWiki.com, there has been a “slow but steady resurgence of semiconductor startups”. This is really important because, as I regularly say here, software may be eating the world, but it can only exist and run on top of semiconductors. It is semiconductors that make software, that is the modern world, run.

If there really is a resurgence of semiconductor startups, it is a really important thing. Too bad it may happen for the wrong reasons, for example “the explosion of Artificial Intelligence (AI)" that is something that, as you can read here is still creating new real problems than solutions to already existing real problems.

There is even more to worry about when you read that who is driving industry concentration, by often becoming “new acquirers of semiconductor startups” is the usual GAFAM suspects: Google, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook.

The positive side of the coin is that, even if driven by US-China trade tensions and inherently dumb shortages like those in the automotive industry, growth of huge investments in this sectors may still lead to something the world badly needs: regional microprocessors.