Yuri Milner, one of the most influential technology investors in the world, believes that the capitalization of the entire global technology market is currently about $8 trillion, and its potential is far from having been exhausted. According to his estimates, this figure will grow to $50 trillion in the next 20 years.
The geographic distribution of the technology capital will also change. If now 60% of the $8 trillion is concentrated in the United States, 30% in China, and only about 4% in Europe, then in the future moving is possible towards European companies.
Milner’s investment company DST Global is precisely focused on investments in technology. DST already has Facebook, Twitter, Spotify, Airbnb, Alibaba, Xiaomi and a lot of other tech giants in its portfolio.
But Milner’s investment horizon extends beyond Earth. His joint with Elon Musk non-profit project Starshot is developing new kind of spaceships — solar sail spacecrafts. Such a spaceship would be able to travel at the speed of about 10% of the speed of light. This would make it possible to reach Alpha Centauri, the closest star system to the Sun, in just 20 years.
Despite the fact that the project of such a spaceship is still at the development stage and many years may pass even before the theoretical launch, Milner and Musk are confident that the work should be continued, since this game is worth the candle. Over the past 10 years, according to Milner, 100 billion planets have been discovered in our Milky Way alone, with conditions similar to those on Earth. And there are about 100 billion such galaxies in the universe. Sooner or later, life will be discovered on some of these hundreds of billions of planets. But to know it for sure, we have to start moving in their direction already now.
