From Silicon Valley to Cerebral Valley.

From American Public Media, this is Marketplace Tech.

I'm Lili Jamali.

They say it's harder to get into than Harvard, why combinator, why see for short is start

up school for tech founders.

It takes applications twice a year, being among the 230 start-ups accepted out of $24,000,

means getting a half million dollar investment and access to mentors who've made it before

them.

Airbnb, Reddit, and DoorDash are on the alumni list.

For most of its 18-year history, why combinator has been based in Mountain View in the heart

of Silicon Valley.

Recently, though, its center of gravity has moved about 40 miles north to San Francisco.

YC opened a new office in June and now considers the city to be its headquarters.

Gary Tan took over last year in a role once held by open AI CEO Sam Altman.

Tan wants founders to be nearby, at least during the first three months they're in the program.

He told me why, on a walk through the city.

If you leave the center of all of the action, a lot of those companies end up dying.

And you need to be around lots and lots of people in order to be successful.

And that's extra true right now, because AI is such a brand new field, like literally

the large language models and the biggest and the best companies that are creating the

platforms right now, like open AI, anthropic, they're right here.

And so San Francisco is mecca.

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