page_title: Silicon Valley
section_title: Municipalities
hierarchical_section_title: Silicon Valley / Municipalities
context_page_description: Silicon Valley is a region in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area in Northern California that serves as a global center for high technology, innovation, venture capital, and social media. It corresponds roughly to the geographical 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, according to the Brookings Institution.
  The word "silicon" in the name originally referred to the large number of innovators and manufacturers in the region specializing in silicon-based MOS transistors and integrated circuit chips. The area is now 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.
context_section_description: The following Santa Clara County cities are traditionally considered to be in Silicon Valley (in alphabetical order):
  Campbell
  Cupertino
  Gilroy
  Los Altos
  Los Altos Hills
  Los Gatos
  Milpitas
  Monte Sereno
  Morgan Hill
  Mountain View
  Palo Alto
  San Jose
  Santa Clara
  Saratoga
  Sunnyvale
  The geographical boundaries of Silicon Valley have changed over the years, traditionally Silicon Valley is known as Santa Clara County, southern San Mateo County and southern Alameda county. However, over the years this geographical area has been expanded to include San Francisco County, Contra Costa County, and the northern parts of Alameda County and San Mateo County, this shift has occurred due to the expansion in the local economy and the development of new technologies.
  The United States Department of Labor's Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW) program defined Silicon Valley as the counties of Alameda, Contra Costa, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, and Santa Cruz.
  In 2015, MIT researchers developed a novel method for measuring which towns are home to startups with higher growth potential and this defines Silicon Valley to center on the municipalities of Menlo Park, Mountain View, Palo Alto, and Sunnyvale.
caption: Map visualization of traditional Silicon Valley in red (bottom), San Francisco in maroon (left), and the Berkeley tech cluster in peach (right).
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