I think the opposite is happening and companies like DeepMind, ElevenLabs or Runwayml are living proof. Not even OpenClaw was created from the valley.
I think in “early days” of AI everything was happening in a small bubble (2021, 22, 23, maybe even 24). But now information flows faster than ever and incredible companies doing state of the art are popping up everywhere
People at major AI labs (using internal models) 3-4 months ahead of startup silicon valley engineers
SV founders/eng 3-6 months ahead of NY
NY founders/eng 6-12 months ahead of rest of world
Most people have no idea how fast AI shifting as 1-2 years behind SOTA
"The future is here, just not equally distributed" - Robert Heinlein