That’s the question we posed Sunday in part one of our three-part examination of “Global Startup Ecosystem Report 2019,” a study produced by a San Francisco non-profit that analyzed the economies of 150 metro areas around the world to determine which ones are the best places in which to launch a new company or move a growing one.

We’ll spare you any more suspense. No, the next Google is not in Blacksburg. And no, the Virginia Tech Corporate Research Center will not be the next Silicon Valley. That’s because, the report says, there won’t be a next Google and there won’t be a next Silicon Valley.

Instead, there will be 30 of them. We just don’t know which 30.

Here’s a useful comparison: Today there are five cities that, in terms of venture capital funding, are where Silicon Valley was in 1998, the year that Google was founded. They are: New York, London, Beijing, Boston, Shanghai. The report says that Los Angeles and Tel Aviv aren’t far behind. “In 1998, Silicon Valley looked like an impossible-to-reach benchmark,” the report says. Two decades later, five and maybe seven cities have. So it’s not unreasonable to look another 20 years out and see lots more places growing into what we think of now as Silicon Valley-like status.

The report listed today’s top 30 cities for technology start-ups, all of which would be likely candidates for those next Silicon Valleys. Of those, only 12 are in the United States — another sign of how the world’s economy is changing. The report also listed a dozen other cities that “have a real shot” at breaking into the Top 30. Not a single one of those is in the United States. If the 20th century was the American century, the 21st century likely won’t be. American policy-makers might want to ask why only so few American cities make the list — and places such as Singapore and Bangalore do.