Vance wrote for
The Register from March 2003 to August 2008. He moved to
The New York Times in September 2008 and then to
Bloomberg Businessweek in January 2011. During his time at
The Register, Vance covered companies such as
IBM,
HP,
Intel, and
Dell, and also wrote about a wide range of technology topics, including robots,
Segway scooters, and the
R programming language. In 2007, Vance wrote a book, called
Geek Silicon Valley, on the history of
Silicon Valley. His writing often also appeared in such publications as
The Economist,
Chicago Tribune,
CNN.com,
The Globe and Mail, the
International Herald Tribune, and
CNET. Vance hosted an audio
podcast called
Semi-Coherent Computing from 2007 to 2008, in which he discussed enterprise computing topics such as
data center cooling and
blade servers, and interviewed guests including chip pioneer David Ditzel of
Transmeta,
Sun Microsystems, and
Bell Labs. In 2015, Vance started writing, producing and hosting the "Hello World" video series for Bloomberg, focusing on the tech scene in various countries. The show was nominated for an Emmy in 2016. In 2015, Vance published his biography about
Elon Musk, the CEO of
Tesla,
SpaceX and other tech companies. The book became an immediate best-seller. In late 2020, Vance was working on a TV series based on his Elon Musk book for HBO. In May 2023, Vance published
When the Heavens Went on Sale: The Misfits and Geniuses Racing to Put Space within Reach about the rise of commercial space. The book focused on
Planet Labs,
Rocket Lab,
Astra Space and
Firefly Aerospace. It became an immediate best-seller. A documentary inspired by the book,
Wild Wild Space was released in July 2024, by
HBO. In 2025, Vance was also credited as a producer on the Netflix documentary ''
Don't Die: The Man Who Wants to Live Forever''. At the beginning of 2025, Vance left
Bloomberg to found Core Memory, a new digital media company focused on science and technology. Core Memory has a
YouTube show, a
podcast, and a
Substack newsletter, but also aims to produce production-quality
documentaries, the first of which is on
brain-computer interfaces and was in production as of January, 2025. He is also working on a book on
OpenAI, for which he says he has already sold the movie rights. ==Personal life ==