Together, these two incubators-the university and the research parks next door-have launched multiple generations of entrepreneurs. Surprisingly often, those generations have been understood as, and indeed presented themselves as, nouveau riche. In some cases, they were indeed that, biographically speaking. But the money that so reliably found its way to funding their sometimes bold, sometimes quixotic, sometimes fraudulent endeavors was old.

Today it comes from Saudi princes and Japanese banks. It comes from family offices that manage the real estate wealth or stock portfolios of American dynasties? It comes from the endowments of universities established by America's kleptocrats. It comes from the "friends and family" of founders, from whom every start-up raises its first round of funding. Which means that far from opening up wealth to new entrants, the funding system actually highlights the opposite development: in the United States in general, and at institutions like Stanford in particular, the wealthy are increasingly keeping to themselves. And they manage to create wealth precisely by virtue of that fact. Silicon Valley is where chthonic cash is given the veneer of eternal youth.