Five Surprising Tech Hubs

Technology is turning unexpected places into boom towns

It seems like every city wants to be the next Silicon Valley.

• Austin has the headquarters of computer maker Dell and online job site Indeed, plus large offices for Apple, IBM, Samsung, and other tech firms.
• Boston’s concentration of universities has spawned tech startups and attracted firms such as General Electric and Raytheon to set up branch offices there.
• Seattle is the home of Amazon, Microsoft, Expedia, Getty Images, and Tableau Software, plus outposts for Silicon Valley firms such as Google.
• Atlanta’s AT&T, Lockheed Martin, Verizon, and General Electric offices keep thousands of engineers, coders, and others busy.
• New York City has the headquarters of Spotify and other tech firms. Nearby, in Armonk, is IBM’s HQ. And the New York Times reports that Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google employ more than 20,000 New Yorkers.

But when you look beyond these obvious candidates, you find places with a higher concentration of technology business than you might expect.

Denver

In 2020, Palantir CEO Alex Karp announced that the software developer was moving from the Silicon Valley center Palo Alto to Denver because he wanted a place "where a diversity of viewpoints is tolerated and even accepted.” Whether or not that was truly a key factor in the move (Karp lives neither in Silicon Valley nor Denver but in New Hampshire), Palantir’s move shined light on Denver as a tech hub.

Major tech companies headquartered in the Denver area include Dish Network, Ball Aerospace, Arrow Electronics, and TTEC (formerly TeleTech). Silicon Valley businesses have large outposts there, too. In 2020, employment at those companies’ Denver branches grew by 14.7%, while it grew in the San Francisco area by only 3.7%.

London

“U.S. tech giants including Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, and Twitter now employ tens of thousands of tech workers in swanky offices across London,” says a recent CNBC report. Other firms, most notably Blockchain, have planted their headquarters in the city.

London is also a breeding ground for startups. As Forbes noted in January 2021, “Technology firms in London attracted $10.5 billion in venture capital money last year, a new record for the U.K. and Europe.”

All of this action, according to research for the real-estate firm Savills, has made London “Europe’s premiere tech city.”

Miami

“In 2020, high-profile investors including Founders Fund general partner Keith Rabois and Blumberg Capital founder David Blumberg moved to South Florida,” according to tech journalist Sophia Kunthara. “Soon after, Miami Mayor Francis Suarez began promoting the city as an emerging tech hub.”

“When venture capitalist Delian Asparouhov tweeted, ‘OK guys hear me out, what if we move Silicon Valley to Miami’,” journalist Nick Fouriezos wrote, “Suarez all but responded by asking how high he could jump. He has since talked with Elon Musk, Jack Dorsey, and Peter Thiel, among others.”

Suarez’s efforts have paid off, Fouriezos says. “The city drew its highest-ever venture funding in 2020. It also saw the largest year-on-year increase of 15.4% in software and IT workers in the nation.”

Raleigh

North Carolina is the 11th poorest state in the country: Its 13.6% poverty rate ranks well above the 10.5% national average. But in and near Raleigh, the tech sector is booming.

Open-source software company Red Hat makes its home in Raleigh. Analytics software developer SAS and semiconductor maker Cree are based in the nearby cities of Cary and Durham. Chinese computer maker Lenovo has put its US headquarters in Morrisville, another local town. Cisco Systems employs thousands of people in the Raleigh region; IBM is there, too. And Apple and Google have announced plans to expand in the area.

Dallas

In July 2021, two reports noted Dallas’s strength in tech. Business Facilities magazine called Dallas America’s best big city for business climate and ranked it third (after Atlanta and Austin) in growth potential as a tech hub. And the IT site WhatIs predicted that in Dallas, “IT jobs are expected to grow by 11% over the next five years.”

Dallas houses the headquarters for AT&T and Texas Instruments. Other companies with operations in the area include Salesforce, Amazon, Microsoft, Lockheed Martin, and IBM. And the business website Growjo reports that 11 of the city’s 15 fastest-growing companies are tech firms, including the top two. (Full disclosure: The nearby city of Irving is Exela Technologies’ headquarters.)

Other up-and-comers

Coming up fast alongside these hot contenders are southern California’s Los Angeles and San Diego; India’s Bengaluru, also known as Bangalore; China’s Beijing and Shanghai; and Pittsburgh, Chicago, and Washington, D.C.

Even cities that aren’t yet on the fast track could join it soon. A report from the tech investing firm Endeavor notes that some decades ago, “[Today’s Silicon Valley] was far behind cities like Boston and New York in the chip industry. No one expected the region to become a hub for these technology companies.”

Maybe your town will become the capital of tomorrow’s silicon empire.

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