It's probably less about raw "innovation" and more about integrating themselves within the fabric of American society.
This achieves simultaneous financial investment and political insurance.
This achieves simultaneous financial investment and political insurance.
In another 80-100 years' time, we'll have nuclear fusion, and if for some reason we've decided we don't want unlimited cheap power with easily disposed of waste, then we'll settle for solar, wind, geothermal, and hydroelectric power. Battery technology improves dramatically every decade. Eventually we'll make some kind of breakthrough with some kind of material that makes storage capacity a moot point.
Dubai is already trying very very hard to diversity and become the Silicon Valley of the Middle East. Saudi Arabia wants to ensure they have enough investment to maintain the current Saudi way of life, because most Saudis are totally and hopelessly addicted to their government checks they receive from oil profits. It's quite literally pacifying the masses and preventing a type of radical Islam from taking over there, and I mean ISIS-type radical.
No one talks about this except for people who have to work intricately and intimately with Saudi companies and the government or three-letter agency analysts who know the country well, but to say that, "It's a problem" is the mother of all understatements.
Pouring tens of billions into startups with questionable business models, in the world's most overpriced market, while conspicuously avoiding UK, EU, ANzAC and Japan - that's a clear sign they're not in this for money. They're trying to trade money for cultural influence.
Uber, DoorDash, and WeWork will either be shells of their current selves or nonexistent in a decade or two, let alone a century from now.
I can only hope Uber is on its way out. But markets staying irrational longer than I can stay solvent, yada yada yada.