Sequoia Capital Partner Shaun Maguire Predicts Hardware Will Dominate Wealth Creation in the Next 25 Years
Sequoia Capital partner Shaun Maguire has written an internal hardware manifesto, asserting that most wealth in the next 25 years will be generated in the hardware sector.
He pointed out that every software revolution has been preceded by a hardware revolution, such as the iPhone giving rise to the iOS App Store and supporting companies like Uber and DoorDash, while current AI software performance is still limited by hardware.
Maguire believes that the traditional silicon supply chain, following Moore's Law, is nearing physical limits like Dennard scaling, and that the technology tree is branching into new hardware fields such as humanoid robots, silicon photonics, and orbital data centers, which will usher in over 20 years of progress.
Source: Public Information
ABAB AI Insight
Shaun Maguire, with a background as a physicist, previously worked at DARPA and in quantum computing before joining Sequoia, where he led investments in hardware-intensive companies like SpaceX, xAI, and Neuralink. He has historically emphasized the foundational role of hardware infrastructure in driving frontier innovation.
Through this manifesto, Sequoia aims to guide capital from software towards hardware infrastructure development, including support for SpaceX's orbital data center plans and silicon photonics startups, to capture the resource mobilization demands of AI training and edge computing while securing long-term strategic control.
Similar to the historical shift in Silicon Valley from PC hardware to internet software and back to chips like Nvidia, Sequoia is currently transitioning from a software investment dominance to a hardware renaissance.
This essentially represents a restructuring of the industry chain driven by technological substitution: the limits of silicon-based Moore's Law are forcing capital to shift from general computing to specialized hardware branches, breaking through bottlenecks through physical innovation and reshaping the allocation of pricing power in AI, robotics, and the space economy.
ABAB News · Cognitive Law
Software eats the world, hardware lays the foundation; without a hardware revolution, software is merely an illusion.
Physical limits are not the endpoint, but the starting point for new branches; those focused on the old tree miss the entire forest.
Capital chases stories, and stories originate from hardware; the wealth balance of 25 years tilts towards the creators.