Palantir just chose Miami.
Cue the predictable take: “Florida doesn’t have the engineering talent.”
Cool. Let’s run the numbers.
Florida produces 89% as many engineers per capita as California.
Eighty. Nine. Percent.
That’s with:
• Zero Stanford
• Zero Caltech
• No 10-campus UC empire
What Florida does have:
• 7 R1 research universities
• $3.3B in annual research spend
• The largest aerospace engineering program in the country
• SpaceX.
Blue Origin.
Lockheed.
L3Harris.
Northrop.
All building here.
Now the part nobody on Tech X wants to discuss:
Florida tuition: ~$6,500/year
California tuition: $14,000+
Florida income tax: 0%
California income tax: up to 13.3%
So let’s compare:
Cost to produce an engineer → Florida wins.
Cost to retain an engineer → Florida wins.
Engineer purchasing power → Florida wins.
That’s arithmetic.
The ROI per engineering degree in Florida might be the highest in America.
The people mocking Florida are arguing with a 2015 version of the state.
The 2026 version is building rockets, defense systems, AI companies and so much more. You can keep the narrative.
We’ll keep the compounding.