Silicon Valley’s most valuable asset is no longer silicon, to make computer chips, or even tech talent, to code software products. Instead, it is capital, which has been accumulating in the region since today’s startup founders were in diapers. Nearby San Francisco is now home to more billionaires per capita than any other city in the world—and many have invested their wealth right back into the startup ecosystem. Put another way: Silicon Valley is the tech capital because of the tech capital.

Recently, some investors have talked a big talk about bringing their cash elsewhere. Peter Thiel announced in February he was moving his Founders Fund to Miami; Joe Lonsdale took his venture firm, 8VC, to Austin. The Bay Area is dead, they say. If money talks, though, it suggests otherwise.

Venture capital had a record year in 2020, and the lion’s share of investments remained in California. That pattern continues into this year: Of the $69 billion that US-based venture funds invested in startups in the first quarter of 2021, more than $25 billion—over a third—landed in Silicon Valley and the Bay Area, according to the latest Pitchbook data. That amount is greater than the next three cities—New York, Boston, and Los Angeles—combined, and more than 30 times the investments in cities like Austin.

Those new numbers tell an old story about venture capital. “In our data set, it’s never not been concentrated in the Bay Area,” says Kyle Stanford, a Pitchbook analyst. This winter, as rumors of technorati fleeing California’s politics and high cost of living reached fever pitch, Stanford sought to qualify declarations that Silicon Valley was on the decline. He found that, between 2015 and 2020, 40 percent of VC dollars went to companies based in the Bay Area. And while other cities have seen more dollars pour in recently, it hasn’t yet done much to unseat Silicon Valley as the regional king.

So far in 2021, California startups continue to collect the biggest investments. Of the largest 25 early-stage deals in Pitchbook’s Q1 data set, 12 were completed in the state. Of the 10 biggest deals, half were based in California. And the size of these deals are getting bigger and bigger. In the first few months of 2021, there were three times as many “mega-rounds,” or rounds over $100 million, as the same quarter last year. While a few of those companies have brought wealth into new areas—like the $2.65 billion Series F raised by automaker Rivian, based in Plymouth, Michigan—many of the largest rounds have been for California-based companies. Enterprise software maker Databricks, headquartered in San Francisco, raised more than $1 billion in financing in the first quarter of the year. Robinhood, headquartered in Menlo Park, raised a staggering round of $3.4 billion.

Large exits are also concentrated in California. In the first quarter of 2021, the top three exits—Roblox, Tuya Smart, and Affirm—were all based in Silicon Valley or San Francisco, netting more than $63 billion between them. Over the past three years, only 20 companies have completed a $1 billion exit outside of the four largest startup ecosystems.

Silicon Valley doesn’t have a complete stranglehold. Smaller rounds of VC funding are making their way to new cities at a higher rate. In the first quarter of 2021, investors funded some 1,500 angel and seed rounds—the greatest quarterly total that Pitchbook has recorded since it started tracking in 2006. The Bay Area received 14.5 percent of those rounds, which still makes it the regional leader, though by a smaller margin than other types of investments. Some cities, like Minneapolis, recorded more first financings in the last quarter than ever before. Denver and Chicago have both shown huge growth year-over-year in total number of investments, indicating growing interest in those startup ecosystems.