Silicon Beach

This article is about an area of tech startups in Los Angeles. For a similar area in Brighton, England, see Brighton § Commerce and industry. For the company, see Silicon Beach Software.

Silicon Beach is the Westside region of the Los Angeles metropolitan area that is home to more than 500 technology companies, including startups. It is particularly applied to the coastal strip from Los Angeles International Airport north to the Santa Monica Mountains,[1] but the term may be applied loosely or colloquially to most anywhere in the Los Angeles Basin. Startups seeded here include Snapchat[2] and Tinder. Major technology companies that opened offices in the region including Google, Yahoo!, YouTube, BuzzFeed, Facebook, Salesforce, AOL, Electronic Arts, Sony, EdgeCast Networks, MySpace, Amazon.com, Apple, Inc., and Netflix.[3] By some 2012 metrics, the region was the second or third-most prominent technology hub in the world.[4][5] In the first six months of 2013, 94 new start-ups in Silicon Beach raised over $500 million in funding, and there were nine acquisitions.[6]

The area offers relatively easy access to LAX (Los Angeles International Airport), the biggest and most connected airport in western North America.[7]

As in the San Francisco Bay Area, the influx of technology companies has boosted home and office rents and real estate prices in Playa Vista, Playa Del Rey, Westchester, Santa Monica, and Venice, already high previously due to beachfront location. The effects are also spilling over into Marina del Rey and Hermosa Beach.[8]

Start-up pockets have also emerged in nearby Culver City, West L.A., and El Segundo.[9] Other pockets include Downtown Los Angeles, Beverly Hills, Hollywood, Glendale, and the San Fernando Valley.[10][11] The tendency of companies to congregate in these centrally-located, high income areas has raised concerns[12] about the feasibility of racial minorities joining the workforce, as they tend to live in further outlying areas.[13]

Silicon Beach is also home to start-up incubators and accelerators, such as Amplify.LA, Science, Disney Accelerator, and TechStars Cedars Sinai.[14]

The Los Angeles metro area was home to 88,000 engineers in 2021, the highest number of any metro area in the United States.[15][16] Higher education institutions in Los Angeles County graduate 6,600 engineering majors a year, the highest of any county in the United States.[17]

Higher education institutions headquartered in Silicon Beach include Loyola Marymount University and Otis College of Art and Design.[18] Other higher education institutions in the nearby Southern California region or with satellite campuses in/nearby Silicon Beach include: Pepperdine University, Santa Monica College, Art Center College of Design, California Institute of Technology, University of California Los Angeles, University of Southern California, Occidental College, Cal State L. A., Cal State Northridge, Cal State Long Beach, Cal State Dominguez Hills, Cal Poly Pomona, and the Claremont Colleges.

  1. ^ Machalinski, Anne (May 22, 2019). "Los Angeles Tech Scene Expands Beyond Silicon Beach". Barrons. Retrieved July 23, 2019.
  2. ^ Hernandez, Daniel (August 23, 2019). "Snapchat's Disappearing Act Leaves Venice Beach Searching for Its Future". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved August 24, 2019.
  3. ^ "Google, Netflix, Amazon, and Apple are planning on becoming millionaires of a different kind". January 16, 2019.
  4. ^ "Startup Genome Ranks The World's Top Startup Ecosystems: Silicon Valley, Tel Aviv & L.A. Lead The Way". TechCrunch. November 20, 2012.
  5. ^ "Silicon Beach emerges as a tech hotbed". USA Today. July 15, 2012.
  6. ^ "Over $500M Raised by 92 LA Startups in the First Half of 2013".
  7. ^ Sharp, Sonja (August 21, 2019). "'I'm not even 30, and I'm flying my own jet' — Silicon Beach elites take a seat in the cockpit". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved August 21, 2019.
  8. ^ Logan, Tim (January 2, 2015) "Buoyed by Silicon Beach, Westchester enjoys a housing surge" Los Angeles Times
  9. ^ Khouri, Andrew (January 15, 2016). "Bixby Land's $49-million office building sale a sign 'it's not the old El Segundo'". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved January 16, 2016.
  10. ^ Chang, Andrea (March 7, 2015). "Tech scene takes hold in revitalized downtown L.A." Los Angeles Times.
  11. ^ Ungerleider, Neal (October 31, 2014). "Why A Subway-Building Binge Could Transform L.A.'s Tech Culture". Fast Company. Retrieved December 28, 2015.
  12. ^ "Why Tech Degrees Are Not Putting More Blacks and Hispanics Into Tech Jobs".
  13. ^ Haya El Nasser (April 29, 2015). "Job sprawl hurting minorities and the poor in suburbia". america.aljazeera.com. Retrieved August 21, 2019.
  14. ^ "A list of top LA accelerators and incubators". May 17, 2013.
  15. ^ "America's Engineering Hubs: The Cities With The Greatest Capacity For Innovation". Forbes. July 13, 2013.
  16. ^ "May 2021 Metropolitan and Nonmetropolitan Area Occupational Employment and Wage Estimates Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA".
  17. ^ "Engineering". datausa.io. Archived from the original on June 7, 2023. Retrieved June 26, 2023.
  18. ^ Staff (June 2018). "Silicon Beach: The Next Wave". LMU Magazine. Loyola Marymount University. Archived from the original on August 13, 2015.