Does Arizona have what it takes to be the true Silicon Valley?

The perfect storm is brewing — manufacturing, EV, Mexico and generative AI. The ingredient that is missing is investor appetite to go big.

According to one Arizona State University professor, artificial intelligence could change that and level the playing field. Hitendra Chaturvedi, a supply chain management professor of practice at ASU’s W. P. Carey School of Business, joined Arizona Horizon to explain why more people and manufacturing companies moving into Maricopa County is a good thing.

“Artificial Intelligence alone is nothing, artificial intelligence once married with manufacturing, which is a unique advantage of Arizona where we are sitting. We bring in over 600,000 small businesses, we bring in the manufacturing economy and supply chain, combine that with artificial intelligence and you’re talking about robots that run using AI, EVs that run using AI so, that’s where the cool part is,” Chaturvedi said.

Chaturvedi said with all the semiconductor companies coming to Arizona, it is the true Silicon Valley. He believes we are at the right place at the right time in history to write the preamble of Silicon Valley 2.0 in our state. We need to shed the real estate mindset of investing and make some big bets to create an ecosystem that is a bigger and better version of old Silicon Valley, Chaturvedi said.

“One of the big things we need to do as a state is we need to have our investors change their mindset. Sorry to say that but our traditional investor mindset is that of a real estate investor,” Chaturvedi said.

According to Chaturvedi, Arizona has gotten education, manufacturing, and high-tech. However, it still needs to work on affordable housing, investor mindset, and incorporate more PR and marketing.