Austin has been named one of the biggest economic winners of the migration of tech workers from Silicon Valley during the coronavirus pandemic.
Local businesses and economic data reveal that the Texas state capital has seen an influx of companies and workers from California’s Bay Area.
Long a centre for technology thanks to IBM, Texas Instruments, and the 1984 launch of the Dell PC company by Michael Dell, a University of Texas at Austin alumni, the city always played second fiddle to the might of Silicon Valley in the era of mobile phones and social media.
At the onset of the pandemic in 2020, the cancellation of SXSW, Austin’s annual tech and arts forum, was a jolt to the city and the tech industry — a sign that things were about to get very bad.
However, the upended economy of lockdowns and enforced remote working began to loosen Silicon Valley’s grip on the tech industry.
The San Francisco Chronicle reports that studies show that while there wasn’t an exodus of firms from the Bay Area, Austin was a major beneficiary of company expansions and the migration of tech…
