Īs more high-tech companies were established across San Jose and the Santa Clara Valley, and then north towards the Bay Area's two other major cities, San Francisco and Oakland, the term 'Silicon Valley' came to have two definitions: a narrower geographic one, referring to Santa Clara County and southeastern San Mateo County, and a metonymical definition referring to high-tech businesses in the entire Bay Area. As of 2021, the region employed about a half million information technology workers. It was in Silicon Valley that the silicon-based integrated circuit, the microprocessor, and the microcomputer, among other technologies, were developed. Silicon Valley also accounts for one-third of all of the venture capital investment in the United States, which has helped it to become a leading hub and startup ecosystem for high-tech innovation, although the tech ecosystem has recently become more geographically dispersed. Silicon Valley is 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. The San Jose Metropolitan Area has the third-highest GDP per capita in the world (after Zürich, Switzerland and Oslo, Norway), according to the Brookings Institution, and, as of June 2021, has the highest percentage of homes valued at $1 million or more in the United States. Other major Silicon Valley cities include Santa Clara, Redwood City and Cupertino. San Jose is Silicon Valley's largest city, the third-largest in California, and the 12th-most populous in the United States. The cities of Sunnyvale, Mountain View, Palo Alto and Menlo Park are frequently cited as the birthplace of Silicon 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. Located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, it corresponds roughly to the geographical area of the Santa Clara Valley. Silicon Valley is a region in Northern California that is a global center for high technology and innovation.

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