Pamela Cruz. Peninsula 360 Press [P360].
After Time magazine issued its list of the 100 most influential companies in the world, the city of Silicon Valley remains a global favorite for companies that innovate every day in various fields.
The list, published at the end of April, shows that the Bay Area and California remain at the top of the list of cities with the highest influx of these types of companies.
Thus, 23 of the most influential companies are in the Bay Area, another seven are in the Los Angeles area and one more is in San Diego.
While there is certainly an exodus from the Bay Area due to the high cost of space, nearly half of the 64 U.S. companies on the list are headquartered in California.
The listing features San Jose-based Zoom, DoorDash in San Francisco and Los Gatos-based Netflix, three companies that have become necessary in everyday life.
Companies involved in online payment systems have also decided to stay in the Bay Area, with San Francisco-based Stripe and San Jose-based PayPal.
Other Bay Area tech companies on the list include social media giants Facebook, Nextdoor and Twitter.
They are joined by online class provider Coursera in Mountain View and fundraising platform GoFundMe in Redwood City.
It is impossible to imagine Silicon Valley without the giants Apple and Google. And in the field of accommodation supply platforms, Airbnb is located in San Francisco.
It's not all plain sailing
Although 1938, when Hewlett-Packard was founded outside San Francisco, is considered the beginning of Silicon Valley, the truth is that today there is greater dissatisfaction with the high cost of living, the limited availability of housing, as well as high levels of crime.
Although it has been mentioned that some of the main competitors in this Bay Area could be Los Angeles or New York, the state of Texas seems to be capturing the interest of some technology firms, either the city of Houston or in Silicon Hills, just outside Austin.
Since 2013, there has been talk of strong growth in these areas, with many jobs in the sector commonly known as STEM - Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics - as well as for its successful medical services export model thanks to the Texas Medical Center cluster.
In early December, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, which brings together the software and business services activities following the Hewlett-Packard split in 2015, announced that it will move its offices to Houston, which is seen as a major blow in the history of Silicon Valley.
Antonio Neri, the firm's president and CEO, said they have "listened to team members who have said they want to spend less time in a physical workplace. And in response to this new future of work we have reevaluated our real estate strategy."
Its new facility will be a 568,000-square-foot campus in Springwoods Village, north of Houston, which will feature a fitness center and outdoor yoga areas. While the company will maintain an innovation area in San Jose, it will make Houston its business and employment center.
This announcement was joined by Elon Musk, who, last December 10, announced that he was abandoning his residence in Silicon Valley and moving to the state of Texas, due to the "complacency" that has lately taken over the mecca of innovation and technology in the US.
Similarly, he announced his intention to move Tesla Motors' headquarters either to Nevada, where it has a battery factory, or to Texas, where SpaceX operates.
Another firm that announced a few days ago its intention to relocate is Oracle, which after more than forty years in Silicon Valley, said it will move its headquarters from Redwood City to Austin, an emerging technology hub in the southern United States.
