Does it work like that though? I agree that AI may be crowding out other industries, but I'm not sure you can just take apart a company and redistribute that money elsewhere.

No, it isn't measuring the velocity of incoming investment. But it goes to show just how outstandingly large the pile of money on one ticker in particular is, relative to other high tech industries that are even favored by investors for their 10x potential (maybe moreso historically than today albeit).

Company valuations aren't a sum of the cash flows invested into a company or the available cash flows out of liquidating it either. These aren't uncorrelated numbers but you can technically get a six trillion dollar "valuation" from one person paying $1 for a sixth of a trillionth of a company.

No they aren't, but it is an example of relative scale of investment. Especially when much of that market cap growth has come just within the last 5-6 years or so. Money could have flowed to other ponds collecting off the river of investor cash flow instead of this one massive lake. This might have lead to a different growth trajectory in our economy and technological development than one so focused on the ROI of chip production in particular, to the exclusion of much else. The fact that much of that demand is brought up by circular investment is another aspect. Two lakes backfeeding into eachother eating more and more of the flow off cash flow river, drying up other ponds along the way. Much is lost with such unitary focus of investment.

I would go a little bit further and just say that American workers haven’t been the main beneficiaries of investment for at least a decade now. It “used to be” (some rose tinted glasses but still big kernel of truth) that if a company was making a lot of money or sitting on a big cash war chest, eventually it would make its way back to the employees for expansion, R&D, etc. It would be used for something! But ever since companies started to divert those flows to stock buybacks (and now, the equivalent which seems to be mutual stock purchases) less and less of those profits have been functionally reinvested - the reinvestment mostly happens on paper, and the already-wealthy owners of the stocks get wealthier without expanding the stockholder base as much.

Investment isn't the issue it's talent.

Jensen provided a platform and roadmap to help advance AI. His selflessness and leadership attracts talent.

Money might help pull talent away but it's silly to think money taken away from Nvidia will suddenly be reinvested into other pursuits.

If you don't think talent is an issue, why hasn't anyone begun seriously competing with SpaceX, TSMC, ASML?