Upstate New York seeded Silicon Valley more directly than most people realize: IBM started in Endicott, GE's research labs sat in Schenectady, and Kodak and Xerox built deep imaging and photonics expertise in Rochester — engineers and ideas from all three migrated west and helped build what came after. Cornell, RPI, the University of Rochester, and the SUNY system now anchor a semiconductor, photonics, and drone corridor that's a direct descendant of that older industrial-research base, not a recent transplant.
Region Stats
Total firms
50
VC / investors
15
Companies
29
Universities
6
Known For
Semiconductors
Photonics
Drones
