>silicon valley doesn't produce much hardware (evidence for this being true? obviously we hear a ton about software, but what about tesla, intel, nest, apple, google, etc?)

Consider the amount of hardware that a modern smart phone replaces such as the calculator, phone, video camera, television, radio, clock...

They are producing less hardware because hardware is becoming increasingly integrated as software:

>The hardware world tends to move into software form at the speed of light.

-Marshall McLuhan