It's not so much that chip fabs were starved by blockchain as much as the fact that many investors generally chase high short-term low-risk yields, which primarily results in major investments being in software-based ventures. Hardware can yield quite large gains too, but the upfront risk is much higher and. the growth rate is slow (if at all nonzero) for a long time before actually growing.

The chip fabs of Intel, Samsung, TSMC, and a couple other companies were not being starved, no. But, nobody was starting new semiconductor fab companies like they did in the early days of Silicon Valley (hence the "silicon" part of the name). That hasn't been happening for a couple decades now.

> The chip fabs of Intel... were not being starved,

Maybe, but consider that Intel stock was pretty flat for a long time in the 2000s/2010s especially compared to the amount of money that was flowing into the FAANG stocks and other social media companies during that time. If Intel's stock had rising at something like those rates they probably would have been able to invest quite a bit more into fabs.

Companies don't invest off their stock price, they invest off their balance sheet, or by borrowing money. All these companies have plenty of cash at hand and can borrow at historically low rates.

Venture capital investment is flashy and gets the press, but there's lots of other money that wants more predicable returns. There was around $600B of VC invested in 2021, but Intel alone has $23B cash on hand, and US pension funds alone (which traditionally invest in safe sectors) has over $35T in management.