Silicon Valley

plural Silicon Valleys · alternative misspelling Silicone Valley

1. countableinformaluncountableOriginally, the region of the San Francisco Bay Area in which there were a high number of industries producing silicon chips; later extended to mean the entire concentration of high-tech businesses in this area.

   The community of radio amateurs—trespassing fiddlers on the cutting edge of technological possibilities—prefigured the geek community that was to inhabit Silicon Valley 50 years later.

   2012, Fiorenza Belussi, Udo Hermann Staber, Managing Networks of Creativity, page 92

   2 more examples

   Since the launch early last year of Udacity and Coursera, two Silicon Valley start-ups offering free education through MOOCs, massive open online courses, the ivory towers of academia have been shaken to their foundations. University brands built in some cases over centuries have been forced to contemplate the possibility that information technology will rapidly make their existing business model obsolete.

   2013 July 20, “The attack of the MOOCs”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8845, archived from the original on 04 Apr 2021

   CEO and cofounder Alex Karp distanced Palantir from other Silicon Valley technology companies in a letter included in the filing, writing that “we seem to share fewer and fewer of the technology sector’s values and commitments.”

   2020 August 25, Sara Ashley O'Brien, Rachel Metz, “Palantir files paperwork to go public and reveals it has never turned a profit”, in CNN Business, archived from the original on 24 Nov 2021

2. countablemetonymicallyuncountableThe tech industry, especially the American tech industry specifically.
3. countableA tech industry cluster in another country, developed as a competitor to the original Silicon Valley.

   The belief in the early 1980s among many European pundits that a series of European Silicon Valleys could be developed before the end of the decade flew in the face of all the United States evidence.

   1995 March 16, Ray P Oakey, High-Technology New Firms: Variable Barriers To Growth, SAGE Publications Limited