Silicon Valley is a region in Northern California that serves as a global center for high technology and innovation. Located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, it corresponds roughly to the geographical area of Santa Clara Valley. San Jose is Silicon Valley's largest city, the third-largest in California, and the tenth-largest in the United States; other major Silicon Valley cities include Sunnyvale, Santa Clara, Redwood City, Mountain View, Palo Alto, Menlo Park, and Cupertino. The San Jose Metropolitan Area has the third-highest GDP per capita in the world (after Zurich, Switzerland and Oslo, Norway), according to the Brookings Institution, and, as of June 2021, has the highest percentage of homes valued at $1 million or more in the United States.
Silicon Valley is home to many of the world's largest high-tech corporations, including the headquarters of more than 30 businesses in the Fortune 1000, and thousands of startup companies. Silicon Valley also accounts for one-third of all of the venture capital investment in the United States, which has helped it to become a leading hub and startup ecosystem for high-tech innovation. It was in Silicon Valley that the silicon-based integrated circuit, the microprocessor, and the microcomputer, among other technologies, were developed. As of 2021, the region employed about a half million information technology workers.
As more high-tech companies were established across San Jose and the Santa Clara Valley, and then north towards the Bay Area's two other major cities, San Francisco and Oakland, the term "Silicon Valley" came to have two definitions: a narrower geographic one, referring to Santa Clara County and southeastern San Mateo County, and a metonymical definition referring to high-tech businesses in the entire Bay Area. The term Silicon Valley is often used as a synecdoche for the American high-technology economic sector. The name also became a global synonym for leading high-tech research and enterprises, and thus inspired similarly named locations, as well as research parks and technology centers with comparable structures all around the world. Many headquarters of tech companies in Silicon Valley have become hotspots for tourism.
Silicon Valley derives its name from the silicon used in transistors and computer chips, pioneered in the region in the 20th century.
"Silicon" refers to the chemical element used in silicon-based transistors and integrated circuit chips, which is the focus of a large number of computer hardware and software innovators and manufacturers in the region. The popularization of the name is credited to Don Hoefler. The first known appearance in print was in his article "Silicon Valley U.S.A.", in the January 11, 1971, issue of the weekly trade newspaper Electronic News. In preparation for this report, during a lunch meeting with marketing people who were visiting the area, he heard them use this term. However, the term did not gain widespread use until the early 1980s, at the time of the introduction of the IBM PC and numerous related hardware and software products to the consumer market.
The urbanized area is built upon an alluvial plain within a longitudinal valley formed by roughly parallel earthquake faults. The area between the faults subsided into a graben or dropped valley. Hoefler defined Silicon Valley as the urbanized parts of "the San Francisco Peninsula and Santa Clara Valley". Before the expansive growth of the tech industry, the region had been the largest fruit-producing and packing region in the world up through the 1960s, with 39 fruit canneries. The nickname it had been known as during that period was "the Valley of Heart’s Delight",
For a full history of the region, see Santa Clara Valley § History.
A map of the Santa Clara Valley (green) with the cities of 'Silicon Valley' highlighted (blue).
A map of the Santa Clara Valley (green) with the cities of 'Silicon Valley' highlighted (blue).
Silicon Valley was born through the intersection of several contributing factors including a skilled science research base housed in area universities, plentiful venture capital, and steady U.S. Department of Defense spending. Stanford University leadership was especially important in the valley's early development. Together these elements formed the basis of its growth and success.
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