Science & Tech Quote by Marc Andreessen

Andreessen’s provocation works because it flips the usual script: tech is supposed to be the market’s golden child, so claiming the stock market “hates technology” is a deliberate insult aimed at finance’s self-image as rational and forward-looking. The line is simple on the surface - look at low P/E ratios - but it’s really a complaint about legitimacy. If the market won’t pay a premium for big tech’s earnings, then (in Andreessen’s framing) the market isn’t merely cautious; it’s irrationally prejudiced against progress.

The intent is strategic. As a venture capitalist and longtime tech evangelist, Andreessen is not neutrally observing valuation metrics; he’s prosecuting a case. Low P/Es become a cultural signal: investors are treating dominant tech firms like utilities or cyclical manufacturers, not like engines of future wealth. That framing invites a moral takeaway: capital is starving the very sector that supposedly drives productivity, innovation, and national competitiveness.

The subtext is also defensive. Coming after years when tech was accused of being overhyped, overfunded, and overvalued, “the market hates technology” recasts a comedown as an overcorrection. It suggests the pendulum has swung from mania to neglect, and that today’s skepticism is as distorted as yesterday’s exuberance.

Context matters: after the dot-com crash and again after later risk-off periods, “low multiples” were often less about hatred than about saturation, regulation risk, slowing growth, and the reality that mature giants can print cash without multiplying it. Andreessen’s line is persuasive precisely because it compresses those messy debates into a single emotionally charged verdict: not mispricing, but betrayal.