The wellspring of innovation in Silicon Valley is anchored by two major universities: the University of California at Berkeley (UCB) and Stanford University. UCB, ranked by US News in 2025 as the nation’s top public university and sixth worldwide, and Stanford University, a private university ranked as third worldwide, are both R1 research universities. R1 universities invest a substantial amount in research, award a significant number of research doctrates, and create the framework for advances in science.
These two universities are the powerhouses which drive Silicon Valley’s startup economy. One cannot understate their import in techology, medicine, aerospace, engineering, and science. Berkeley Unix, for example, was a major testbed for many operating systems and networking structures used today. 386BSD, which William and I spearheaded in the early 1990’s, pushed operating systems and networking into the mainstream and open source as the mechanism for new works.
This year UCB was rated second in space sciences by US News. However, the premiere MAVEN program based at UCB Space Sciences Laboratory and the University of Colorado Boulder Laboratory for Atmospheric Physics, like many other aerospace and science programs, was completely gutted in the most recent budget debacle, among other programs in aerospace. This is happening across every science, engineering, and technology program today in every R1 university!
MAVEN is a highly successful and well-published project which expands knowledge and technologies. But like so many other things we depend on, I suppose it’s not on TikTok enough to merit attention — hence its successes are ignored.
This reductive and unimaginative attitude is illustrative of how our current populist era sees the advances that Silicon Valley has created. We in the tech space have made the Internet possible. We have created the underlying hardware to transmit it. We create the economic incentives for startups. We are the information economy.
Yet we are treated terribly by a public and political system to which we have given so much. Perhaps too much. UCB, along with other R1 universities are facing catastrophic research cuts, layoff, and loss of top-tier scientists and researchers to international universities. Likely the next big advances will not be from the good old USA, but instead China and Europe. So much for America first.
To keep some critical research going and to keep commitments to their students, researchers and staff, UCB and Stanford may be forced to dip deeply into their endowments. UCB has an endowment overseen by the state of $22.6B. Stanford, in contrast, holds $37.6B in endowments.
The reason UCB has a substantially lower endowment despite its far greater research and teaching reach is due to the manner of how technology transfer is handled. UCB, as a public university, is torn between public responsibilities and the concerns of private technology locks held by companies and startups. This dichotomy has resulted in many different debacles, among them the Berkeley Unix lawsuits of the 1990’s and the CRISPR patent failures of the 2010’s. Simply put, UCB isn’t very good at monetizing their advances. Perhaps this is for the best.
Stanford, on the other hand, has no such public concern. Technology transfer is quite straightforward, and the easy movement of people between the lab and startups makes up much of the growth of their endowment. There are advantages to being private.
But despite the fact that Stanford (along with Harvard, Yale, and other private R1 universities) have also educated much of the current political, judicial, and financial ruling class today, these hefty private endowments have caught the populist eye and are ripe for plucking. A proposal to place a 21% tax on them has these universities quivering in fear. Stanford is already planning for budget cuts and layoffs.
The tech billionaires educated and nurtured by Stanford who are going to benefit the most from the latest federal budget do not appear to be concerned with the next generation of technology and innovation. Perhaps they are tired. Perhaps they are greedy. Perhaps they simply don’t want anyone to do better than they did, and they’re going to take it all to their grave — if they don’t find a way to live forever. It really doesn’t matter.
William and I gave back to UCB with our own sweat and blood and tears. 386BSD was a labor of love, and it changed the industry.
It’s a pity that Stanford, Harvard, and their ilk did not instill a similar sense of loyalty to Silicon Valley. Things might have been very different