Build it and they will come

Hello, it’s Sarah McBride in San Francisco. Today we’ll look at tech’s obsession with creating the perfect metropolis. But first...Three thi [View in browser]( [Bloomberg]( Hello, it’s Sarah McBride in San Francisco. Today we’ll look at tech’s obsession with creating the perfect metropolis. But first... Three things you need to know today: • Mark your calendar: On Sept. 12, [Apple will unveil]( new iPhones and watches • Meta intercepted a huge [Chinese influence campaign]( • Hewlett Packard Enterprise [is confident](about businesses upgrading their technology Don’t stop believing What is it about tech bros and utopias? Marc Andreessen, Reid Hoffman, Mike Moritz and other Silicon Valley billionaires have big plans for a rural area about 60 miles northeast of San Francisco. For years, Moritz has seen it as an ideal place to reimagine city life. Rethinking things is what venture capitalists do. And that’s not always easy to do that within existing cities. Ride-hailing apps like Uber and Lyft have increased the number and intensity of [traffic jams](, Airbnb and other home-sharing apps are accused of breaking down neighborhoods’ [social fabric](, and self-driving cars are causing all kinds of trouble — most recently with a Cruise vehicle [colliding]( with an ambulance in San Francisco. That’s why the ultimate tech dream is to build a better Gotham. Sidewalk Labs, an affiliate of Alphabet Inc.’s Google, had planned to remake a portion of [Toronto]( with a project called Quayside — “a fundamentally more sustainable and affordable community resulting from innovations in technology and urban design.” But the plan was abandoned three years ago amid widespread opposition. Startup developer Y Combinator wanted to [create a city]( to test technology and new forms of government. It identified a potential site in Mexico but then gave up on the idea. Marc Lore, the founder of online retailers Diapers.com and Jet.com, went as far as hiring celebrity Danish architect Bjarke Ingels to design plans for his city, [Telosa](, but it never advanced beyond that. Painted Rock, Nevada, a 67,000-acre plot purchased in 2018 by cryptocurrency millionaire Jeffrey Berns, was meant to become a smart city as well. In 2021, local county commissioners voted down the proposal for a new government, and there has been no action since that year, according to a county spokesman. And the jury is still out on [Neom](, a tech-heavy “smart” community under construction in Saudi Arabia that seems like an amalgam of almost every science-fiction fantasy imaginable. That’s not to say futuristic planned communities can’t work. But the city-scale ones are built with heavy state involvement, not on the dreams of the super rich. Take [Milton Keynes]( in Britain, created by government decree in 1967, or Shenzhen, China, which started growing after Deng Xiaoping deemed it a special economic zone in 1980 and is now a technological epicenter of the country. Moritz pitched his idea for a highly walkable, bustling metropolis in Solano County back in 2017. He envisioned a blank slate where urban planners could experiment with design, construction techniques, new forms of government and more, according to the New York Times, which originally reported on the project. Since then, a mysterious company called Flannery Associates has spent more than $800 million scooping up thousands of acres of farmland. It has roped in Andreessen, Hoffman, the sibling founders of payments company Stripe, Laurene Powell Jobs and others as investors. Many other VCs say they appreciate the brashness of the vision. “I like bold and ambitious, so I like the city thing,” said Dan Scheinman, an angel investor who has backed Zoom Video Communications Inc., Arista Networks Inc. and others. “I love the audacity and hope it happens,” Sheel Mohnot, a co-founder and partner at Better Tomorrow Ventures, [wrote]( on social media platform X. Several also appreciated the difficulty involved. “Tons of obstacles,” noted Mohnot. “I have to wonder what the timeline ends up looking like.” Juliana Felkner, an assistant professor of architecture and community and regional planning at the University of Texas at Austin, said the organizers would have to work with local municipalities and sustainability experts on everything from infrastructure to energy use. [Jerry Neumann](, co-author of Founder vs Investor, speculated in an interview that the venture capitalists involved wanted to buy property partly to diversify outside of tech. To the extent they want to experiment with new communities and government, “they’re reading too much Neal Stephenson,” he said, referring to the science-fiction writer. “Why not buy 5% of Detroit?” “These guys are giving up on you and me,” wrote London-based architect [John Allsopp]( in response to Mohnot’s X post. He pointed to [seasteading]( (the concept of creating permanent dwellings at sea) and a Mars colony — goals of Peter Thiel and Elon Musk, among others — as examples of what he called exits from life’s inconveniences. “Our only place in these new creations will be as servants and consumers.” Just think of it as the role of the Kens in this summer’s hit movie, which depicts another pseudo-utopian community. What they discover is they can’t escape reality, even in Barbieland. —[Sarah McBride](mailto:smcbride24@bloomberg.net) with [Biz Carson](mailto:bcarson28@bloomberg.net) The big story Google is adding artificial intelligence tools from Meta, Anthropic and others into its cloud platform, weaving more generative AI into its products and [positioning itself as a one-stop shop]( for customers seeking to tap into the technology. One to watch Fractal Co-CEO Aya Kantorovich joins Ed Ludlow and Caroline Hyde to discuss a potential watershed moment for the crypto industry on Bloomberg Technology. Get fully charged Dating apps are courting [Gen Z subscribers](. The FBI breaks up [a “botnet” gang](. Crypto’s biggest enemy is [put on defensive]( by Grayscale ruling. 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