The 11 Most Important Tech Cities in the U.S.

Silicon Valley is still mighty—but there are signs of decline. Could small cities like Huntsville, Ala., be the future of tech in America?

The Salesforce Tower. Photo courtesy of Salesforce

The economic outlook of cities, and nations, is now more than ever shaped by the success of their tech industries. While Silicon Valley has long been the cradle of some of the most important tech companies in the world—thanks to a concentration of talent, research universities and venture capital—other cities are fast gaining traction as the country’s best places to invest, build a company or work when it comes to tech.

Consulting firm KPMG’s Technology Industry Innovation Survey for 2019 indicates that the Bay Area may fall behind in the coming years, surpassed in significance in the U.S. by cities such as New York, Boston, Austin, Texas, and Washington, D.C., and globally by hubs such as Beijing, Tokyo and London, along with a score of others. Research from Indeed.com on the state of technology job markets in the U.S. found that the Bay Area was still in the lead in terms of generating top tech jobs, but Austin, Seattle, Boston, Raleigh, N.C., Washington, D.C., and Baltimore were close behind. And some smaller cities—such as Huntsville, Ala., and Boulder, Colo.—were surging in terms of the percentage of tech-related jobs posted in 2018 (demand for employees is a rough corollary to the health of the tech industry in a given city).

Of course, there’s no single measure for what makes a city a leader in technology: Industry leadership requires a unique mix of talent, government support, venture capital and angel investing networks, educational institutions and infrastructure. Taking all that into account, and considering lifestyle questions as well, here’s Worth’s list of the top 11 tech cities in the U.S.

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