ChatGPT and pickleball are in. Crypto and Meta are out: What’s hot in tech this year

The tech industry has been rocked by a revolution in generative AI over the past few months.

Since OpenAI released its buzzy chatbot ChatGPT last November, big tech giants have been racing to compete. In February, Google unveiled its ChatGPT competitor Bard, which it officially released to the public in March. Microsoft also had a new version of its search engine Bing with an AI assistant called Sydney in February.

Smaller AI startups have launched their own chatbots too, like Anthropic's Claude. 

Venture capitalists have been pouring millions into new investments in the field. Tech workers are using AI tools for everything, including research and coding.

Ammaar Reshi, who works at the SF-based fintech company Brex, said he's overheard some "insane" remarks amid the AI frenzy sweeping Silicon Valley, including recently:  "I really believe you can recreate the human soul with AI."

During the pandemic, the San Francisco metro area ceded some of its dominance over the tech industry to growing hubs in cities like Miami and Austin.

Now, founders are rushing back to build startups that capitalize on generative AI. The neighborhood of Hayes Valley, in particular, has become such a hotspot for new AI startups that it's jokingly been renamed "Cerebral Valley."

Venture capitalists and those with more corporate tech jobs also are heading back to the office. 

Four Bay Area-based tech workers told Insider that they're going in to meet colleagues, grab coffees, or just get out of their apartments. Their overall consensus is that working from home is on its way out and working from the office is back in. 

Security card swipe data also shows that office occupancy in the San Francisco metro area has increased since the beginning of the year. 

Brex's Ammaar Reshi told Insider that it's become commonplace to say "SF is back" at least once in conversation. 

Pickleball—a racket sport similar to tennis—has become one of Silicon Valley's favorite pastimes to take a break from work and build relationships. 

Venture capitalists previously told Insider that the popularity of pickleball speaks to a broader shift away from clubby forms of socializing to more accessible ones in the venture community.

"A lot of the things that used to be in vogue I probably wouldn't do anymore, like golf outings or whiskey nights or cigar tastings," Rak Garg, a principal at Bain Capital Ventures, and pickleball enthusiast, previously told Insider.

"It's not very inclusive. That's why I think that pickleball and all these other things are better. It just makes everybody feel more at home."

Across the country, too, shares of pickleball players are growing quickly with participation in the sport jumping 40% over the past two years. Last week, New York's Central Park added 14 pickleball courts that will be available to players for the coming six months. 

Jack Dorsey may be as famous by now for co-founding Twitter as he is for his fastidious health regimen—which includes regular ice baths. 

While Dorsey said he began taking ice baths in the evenings in 2016, the rest of the tech industry has since caught up.

Four tech workers told Insider that cold plunges have become ubiquitous as a productivity and anti-aging hack. 

Dr. Anant Vinjamoori, chief medical officer of Modern Age, a New York-based healthcare company focused on longevity, previously told Insider that a plunge into an ice cold bath results in "a surge in the production of neurotransmitters such as epinephrine and dopamine" which have immediate rejuvenating and energizing effects, he said.

Another telling sign that cold plunges are in? Venture capitalist Turner Novak recently joked about a founder who didn't take "5am cold plunges."

—Turner Novak 🍌🧢 (@TurnerNovak) March 22, 2023

Metformin, a pill prescribed for diabetes, has been gaining popularity with Silicon Valley's biohackers as a way to slow the onset of diseases and improve the aging process. 

The drug helps regulate blood sugar and decrease appetite which gives the metabolism a boost and stimulates a cellular clean-up process known as autophagy. 

In January, Brianne Kimmel, a venture capitalist who founded the firm Worklife Ventures, tweeted about metformin use across San Francisco, saying "surely everyone is on it" but "no one talks about it."

—Bri Kimmel (@briannekimmel) January 24, 2023

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman also said his personal anti-aging regimen includes metformin. 

The hottest weekend event in San Francisco right now might be a hackathon. 

Hackathons are social coding events where programmers (and others in the industry) collaborate on a project with a tight deadline.

The revolution in AI heating up across Silicon Valley has turned hackathons into an effective way for people to network their way into the industry. 

Worklife's Kimmel previously told Insider "It's so early in the AI ecosystem, where a lot of the conversations being had are mostly either dinners with less than 10 people or self-organized and self-funded hackathons that happen on weekends." 

And on the East Coast, tech mixers are growing in popularity.

Several attendees at a recent tech mixer in New York hosted by Andrew Yeung— a product lead at Google who has become known for hosting tech networking events— said they have a strong desire to meet people face to face after years of Zoom calls. 

Last October, Ada Yeo, principal and chief of staff at venture firm Khosla Ventures, tweeted that "not drinking" had become a new "tech status signal."

—Ada Yeo (@adayeoyh) October 12, 2022

Though sales of alcohol and spirits spiked in the early days of the pandemic, many tech workers now seem to be moving away from alcohol due to its impact on productivity, Bay Area therapist Annie Wright told Insider. There is a rise in "no-alcohol" parties too, Wright said. 

Even Marc Andreessen, the veteran venture capitalist who launched Andreessen Horowitz, admitted in a blog post last month that he stopped drinking alcohol six months ago and feels much better. 

At the beginning of 2022 the crypto world was on fire— in a good way.

Prices for major cryptocurrencies like Ethereum and Bitcoin were high, well-heeled clients were rushing to collect digital art backed by NFTs, and the founder of a well-known crypto exchange called FTX was a multibillionaire. 

But then, FTX collapsed, ushering in a cold crypto winter that continued into 2023. 

In January, major companies in the cryptocurrency industry like Genesis, Coinbase, Blockchain.com, and Crypto.com, announced plans to cut their workforces. The legal battle around Sam Bankman-Fried's crypto empire has grown muddier by the day. Crypto company founders are also struggling to find places to house their money amid the collapse of crypto-friendly banks.

Now, founders like Ankur Nagpal, who has launched startups like Teachable and Ocho, say attending an NFT conference in 2023 is "embarrassing."

—Ankur Nagpal (@ankurnagpal) April 6, 2023

It's hard to talk about the tech industry in 2023 without talking about layoffs at tech companies, including Meta and Microsoft as well as smaller startups. 

The mass job cuts began last year as business growth slowed and labor costs began rising, with companies like Meta, Twitter, and Netflix announcing significant cuts. Those layoffs have extended into 2023, with cloud company Salesforce axing 8,000 employees, and companies like Amazon and Google announcing historic staff cuts. 

Amid the corporate carnage, many tech workers are finding new meaning outside of their corporate jobs. Some have realized that their company is not their family while others have turned side hustles into lucrative full-time gigs. 

Reshi told Insider that those who still have jobs have stopped going to the gym because their company has cut wellness stipends. Others, he's observed, are cutting back on ordering food from DoorDash, citing the "macroeconomy."

Whether it was for lower taxes, the thriving crypto scene, or the nightlife, tech workers and investors alike were flocking to Miami last year. 

This year, moving to Miami has fallen to the wayside among the tech crowd, the therapist Annie Wright told Insider. 

"It's all about chasing the hottest job opportunities and right now, it seems like those are in California again because of AI," Wright said.

"Those who moved to Miami to take advantage for tax breaks from crypto are moving back to Silicon Valley, based on what I'm hearing and seeing," she added. 

Mark Zuckerberg's love affair with the metaverse is on the rocks. 

Over the past couple of years, Zuckerberg fixated on the idea that a new, sweeping virtual world would be the future of his business. But Reality Labs, the division of Meta building the metaverse, was losing billions.

This year, though, he seems to have pushed that vision under the rug rarely mentioning the metaverse in public statements. Reality Labs also was not spared when 10,000 employees were cut at Meta in March. 

And Meta isn't the only company that's done an about-face. 

Apple has postponed plans for its augmented reality glasses and Microsoft announced job cuts to its HoloLens division. In late March, Disney laid off its entire metaverse team.

Keith George, co-founder of the e-commerce marketplace platform Cortina, told Insider that one of his biggest takeaways from this year's Shoptalk— a major retail industry conference —was that the metaverse was "out." 

There is "still no existing use case with a real ROI" for the metaverse, George wrote in his conference notes, which were seen by Insider.