Hacker-Turned-Entrepreneur Urges Tech Workers to Reject Surveillance Capitalism

George Hotz, known for early iPhone jailbreaking and PlayStation 3 hacking, has issued a stark challenge to the tech industry. In a recent post, the entrepreneur detailed his deliberate avoidance of Big Tech wealth despite internships at Google and brief stints at Facebook and Twitter.

"I quit Facebook after nine months in 2011 before any shares vested because I thought their mission of 'wasting the world's time' was misguided," Hotz stated. His personal wealth comes from security competitions (Pwn2Own, CTFs), cryptocurrency contracting, and prudent investing—not Big Tech salaries. He attributes his financial position to frugality, citing budget global travel experiences costing less than typical American living expenses.

Hotz founded two intentionally counter-cultural companies:

1. comma.ai: Develops open-source robotics software currently operating in 30,000 vehicles. The Openpilot ecosystem encourages community forks and third-party hardware, adhering to open-source principles. "Who controls the robots matters," Hotz emphasizes. "Not legal ownership, but who has root access—who truly 'owns' the system."

2. tiny corp: Aims to "commoditize the petaflop" by making AI training resources widely accessible. The company develops full-stack software from AI models down to memory-mapped I/O registers. Hotz argues NVIDIA's market dominance stems from software superiority, not hardware advantages, and aims to level the playing field for accelerator manufacturers worldwide.

Both companies share key principles: sustainable profitability, open-source outputs, controlled growth without hyper-scaling, and alignment with mission-focused investors. Hotz accepted minimal venture capital from Andreessen Horowitz for comma.ai while retaining full control.

The entrepreneur issued a direct challenge to engineers working in what he considers harmful sectors: "To everyone building adtech, surveillance systems, gambling platforms, secretive research, or cloud lock-in mechanisms—what are you doing with your life? Why sell out our collective future?"

He contends systemic change doesn't require universal participation: "Just enough people need to stop. It starts with individual decisions to build meaningful technology instead of extractive systems." Hotz points to his companies as proof that open, sustainable alternatives to surveillance capitalism are viable.

As AI hardware and robotics advance, Hotz's model presents a concrete alternative to traditional tech growth trajectories. The call resonates amid increasing scrutiny of Big Tech's social impact, offering a template for technologists seeking ethical exit strategies from harmful systems.