“Silicon Forest” Attracts Talent from the Mother of all Tech Ecosystems

Tech disruption happens geographically as much as it happens across industries.

Portland, now known in the tech community as “Silicon Forest,” is becoming a big draw for developers as Bay Area high rents make Silicon Valley – arguably the most hallowed of startup ecosystems – less attractive.

As an indication of the trend, the region’s talent pool grew 28 percent between 2010 and 2013, compared to 20.8 percent in Silicon Valley.

Where the “Silicon Forest” Name Comes From

The nickname is older than the startup boom. According to Wikipedia, “Silicon Forest” was first used in a Japanese company’s press release in 1981, and Lattice Semiconductor trademarked the term in 1984. It originally referred to the cluster of high-tech companies in Washington County, on Portland’s west side, especially the corridor between Beaverton and Hillsboro.

The region’s tech history goes back further still. Tektronix and Electro Scientific Industries were pioneers from at least the 1940s, and Intel later made Oregon its largest operating hub. Wikipedia notes that Intel’s Ronler Acres campus in Hillsboro became its most advanced anywhere, and that Intel had about 22,000 employees in Oregon by 2022. Historically, the area specialized in hardware: test equipment, chips, displays and printers.

That’s what made the 2016 trend interesting. The new arrivals were often developers and software workers, adding a different kind of company to a region long built on manufacturing and chips.

Pacific Northwest Benefits

Portland’s affordability is a major factor behind the growth experienced in the high tech sector, and resulting increased salaries are contributing back to the city’s wealth. And this benefits the U.S. Pacific Northwest as a whole.

While prospective migrants are attracted to the low cost of living and work-life balance offered by the region, Portland and Seattle, its neighbor to the north, are benefitting from employee exits at tech giants.

A tech ecosystem map from Madrona Venture Capital demonstrates how the University of Washington, Amazon, Microsoft and other notable contributors to the ecosystem have spurred the creation of startups, including now established Real Networks and Expedia.

How Big Companies Seed New Startups

The pattern Madrona mapped is one of the most reliable ways a tech region grows. Large employers train thousands of engineers and managers, and some of them eventually leave to start their own companies. They take with them skills, contacts and often money from stock they earned along the way. Each successful startup then becomes a training ground of its own.

Silicon Forest followed the same path decades earlier. Wikipedia describes Floating Point Systems, co-founded in Beaverton in 1970 by three former Tektronix employees, as the area’s first spin-off company. Sequent Computer Systems, started by a team that included three Intel vice presidents, was later bought by IBM.

With Google setting up a larger office space in Portland, this trend should continue to bolster the region’s startup prowess and ability to compete with other tech ecosystems around the world.

What Happened Next

Portland’s software scene did produce companies that larger firms wanted to buy. Puppet, the Portland-based maker of infrastructure automation software, was acquired by Minneapolis-based Perforce in April 2022, which then cut about 15% of Puppet’s Portland workforce, according to Wikipedia. Jive Software, a collaboration software company with an office in Portland, was acquired by Aurea in June 2017.

The region’s biggest employer has had a harder stretch. After Lip-Bu Tan became Intel’s CEO in March 2025, the company began a major restructuring. In June 2025 it announced it would close its automotive chip business and cut up to 20% of staff at its Hillsboro, Oregon foundry, and in July it was reported that Intel would cut 5,000 jobs across California, Oregon, Arizona and Texas, Wikipedia’s Intel entry notes.

That shows both sides of a region built around a few large employers. They anchor the talent pool and spin out new companies, but when one of them cuts back, the whole area feels it. It also means a steady supply of experienced engineers looking for their next role, which is exactly the kind of talent startups need.

What It Means for Founders

The lesson of Silicon Forest is that cost and quality of life can pull talent away from the most famous hubs, but they don’t build an ecosystem on their own. What turns a cheaper city into a startup city is the chain this article describes: big employers that train people, local investors who back the ones who leave, and successful startups that do the same thing again. For founders weighing where to build, it’s worth asking which of those links a region already has, and which are still missing.