Silicon Hills | |
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Country | United States |
State | Texas |
City | Austin |
Silicon Hills is a nickname for the cluster of high-tech companies in the Austin metropolitan area in the U.S. state of Texas. [1] [2] Silicon Hills has been a nickname for Austin since the mid-1990s. The name is analogous to Silicon Valley, but refers to the hilly terrain on the west side of Austin. High tech industries in the area include enterprise software, semiconductors, corporate R&D, biotechnology, the video game industry, and a variety of startup companies.
Technology companies with offices in the area include Advanced Micro Devices, Amazon.com, Apple Inc., ARM Holdings, Cisco, eBay, ESO, Facebook, Google, IBM, Indeed, Intel, NXP Semiconductors, PayPal, Procore, Silicon Labs, Texas Instruments, Oracle Corporation, Visa, VMWare, and many others. [3] Dell's worldwide headquarters are located in Round Rock, a suburb of Austin.
Austin was one of the top areas for venture capital with investors investing $621 million in 2013 [4] (43% of that went to software and semiconductor firms). Some venture capital investors include Austin Ventures, Central Texas Angels Network, Genesis UT, and Tritium Partners. [5] There are at least 15 startup incubators as well, including: Capital Factory, Austin Technology Incubator, DivInc, Founder's Institute, Tarmac and the IC2 Institute [6] (the incubator for the University of Texas at Austin). Additionally, Austin houses several startup accelerators including Sputnik ATX venture-accelerator, Tech Stars, and Mass Challenge TX.
Silicon Valley is a region in Northern California that is 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 the Santa Clara Valley. The term "Silicon Valley" refers to the area in which high-tech business has proliferated in Northern California, and it also serves as a general metonym for California's high-tech business sector.
Silicon Forest is a Washington County cluster of high-tech companies located in the Portland metropolitan area in the U.S. state of Oregon. The term most frequently refers to the industrial corridor between Beaverton and Hillsboro in northwest Oregon. The high-technology industry accounted for 19 percent of Oregon's economy in 2005, and the Silicon Forest name has been applied to the industry throughout the state in such places as Corvallis, Bend, and White City. Nevertheless, the name refers primarily to the Portland metropolitan area, where about 1,500 high-tech firms were located as of 2006.
Vinod Dham is an Indian-American engineer, entrepreneur, and venture capitalist. He is known as the 'Father of the Pentium Chip' for his contribution to the development of Intel's Pentium micro-processor. He is also a mentor and advisor, and sits on the boards of companies, including startups funded through his India-based fund Indo-US Venture Partners, where he is the founding managing director.
Cirrus Logic Inc. is an American fabless semiconductor supplier that specializes in analog, mixed-signal, and audio DSP integrated circuits (ICs). Since 1998, the company's headquarters have been in Austin, Texas.
Mayfield, also known as Mayfield Fund, is a US-based venture capital firm that focuses on early-stage to growth-stage investments in enterprise and consumer technology companies. Founded in 1969 and based in Menlo Park, California, it is one of Silicon Valley's oldest venture capital firms.
Donald Thomas Valentine was an American venture capitalist who concentrated mainly on technology companies in the United States. As the founder of Sequoia Capital, he has been referred to as the "grandfather of Silicon Valley venture capital". The Computer History Museum credited him as playing "a key role in the formation of a number of industries such as semiconductors, personal computers, personal computer software, digital entertainment and networking."
Silicon Wadi is a region in Israel that serves as one of the global centres for advanced technology. It spans the Israeli coastal plain, and is cited as among the reasons why the country has become known as the world's "start-up nation". The highest concentrations of high-tech industry in the region can be found around Tel Aviv, including small clusters around the cities of Raʽanana, Petah Tikva, Herzliya, Netanya, Rehovot, and Ness Ziona. Additional clusters of high-tech industry can be found in Haifa and Caesarea. More recent high-tech establishments have been raised in cities such as Jerusalem and Beersheba, in towns such as Yokneam Illit, and in Airport City. Israel has the third highest number of startups by region and the highest rate of startups per capita in the world.
East London Tech City is a technology cluster of high-tech companies located in East London, United Kingdom. Its main area lies broadly between St Luke's and Hackney Road, with an accelerator space for spinout companies at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park.
David "Dave" McClure is an entrepreneur and angel investor based in the San Francisco Bay Area, who founded the business accelerator 500 Startups and served as its CEO until his resignation in 2017. He founded Practical Venture Capital soon after, a new venture capital fund that would continue to work with companies he previously funded through 500 Startups.
Mellanox Technologies Ltd. was an Israeli-American multinational supplier of computer networking products based on InfiniBand and Ethernet technology. Mellanox offered adapters, switches, software, cables and silicon for markets including high-performance computing, data centers, cloud computing, computer data storage and financial services.
Virtual Computing Environment Company (VCE) was a division of EMC Corporation that manufactured converged infrastructure appliances for enterprise environments. Founded in 2009 under the name Acadia, it was originally a joint venture between EMC and Cisco Systems, with additional investments by Intel and EMC subsidiary VMware. EMC acquired a 90% controlling stake in VCE from Cisco in October 2014, giving it majority ownership. VCE ended in 2016 after an internal division realignment, followed by the sale of EMC to Dell.
A startup ecosystem is formed by people in startups in their various stages, and various types of organizations in a location that are interacting as a system to create and scale new startup companies. These organizations can be further divided into categories such as universities, funding organizations, support organizations, research organizations, service provider organizations and large corporations. Local Governments and Government organizations such as Commerce / Industry / Economic Development departments also play an important role in a startup ecosystem. Different organizations typically focus on specific parts of the ecosystem function and startups at their specific development stage(s).
Intel Capital is a division of Intel Corporation, set up to manage corporate venture capital, global investment, mergers and acquisitions. Intel Capital makes equity investments in a range of technology startups and companies offering hardware, software, and services targeting artificial intelligence, autonomous technology, data center and cloud, 5G, next-generation compute, semiconductor manufacturing and other technologies. The firm is one of the most active American investors in the Chinese artificial intelligence industry.
Silicon Peach is a term used to refer to Atlanta and the concentration of high tech development in the area. The term is a continuation of the reference following Silicon Valley (California), Silicon Alley, Silicon Prairie (Chicago), Silicon Hills (Austin), and Silicon Beach. Atlanta has long been a high tech center. Some of the traditional engines of technology development in Atlanta have been the ATDC at the Georgia Institute of Technology and the Technology Association of Georgia (TAG). New centers of innovation and technology acceleration are emerging, including the recent launch of the Atlanta Tech Village; the Ponce City Market; Tech Square Labs; and the Flatiron Accelerator.
Stratoscale was a software company offering software-defined data center technology, with hyper-converged infrastructure and cloud computing capabilities. Stratoscale combined compute, storage, and networking hardware with no additional third party software. Stratoscale has shut down with no details for the future of its products.
Sierra Ventures is an American venture capital firm based in San Mateo, California. It targets startups in sectors including enterprise tech, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and healthcare.
The Samsung Catalyst Fund (SCF) is the evergreen venture capital fund of Samsung Electronics. The fund invests in deep technology, artificial intelligence and big data startups. The fund's headquarters are located in San Jose, California, with offices in Seoul, Tel Aviv, and Paris.
CIIE.CO is an Indian startup accelerator and incubator that supports early-stage startups located at IIM Ahmedabad in Ahmedabad, India. It was founded in 2002 to promote innovation and entrepreneurship in India. It is a Center of excellence set up at Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad with support from the Government of India's Department of Science and Technology and the Government of Gujarat.