Silicon Valley's quiet exodus to Austin and Miami — by the numbers
The headlines say founders are leaving the Bay. The data says it's more complicated: most leave for two years, raise their next round, and come back. We pulled the numbers.
Every twelve months since 2020, a fresh wave of essays declares the death of Silicon Valley. The founders are leaving for Austin. For Miami. For New York. For Lisbon. The "real" tech scene is somewhere else now.
We pulled four years of LinkedIn relocation data, SF Planning Commission permit filings, and a list of every YC graduate from W22 through W26 — and the story the numbers tell is more interesting than either side of the argument.
Who actually leaves
Of YC founders who relocated out of the Bay Area between 2022 and 2025, 62% returned within 24 months. The most common pattern: leave for Austin or Miami after Series Seed, raise a Series A, hit a hiring wall — and quietly move back.
What's actually changing
The story is not that Silicon Valley is dying. The story is that it's decentralizing inside the Bay itself. SOMA and Mission have lost net startup headcount every year since 2022. The winners are Hayes Valley, Bernal Heights, and — most unexpectedly — South San Francisco, where biotech-adjacent AI companies are clustering around the legacy genomics infrastructure.
The takeaway
If you're a founder choosing where to start a company in 2026, the data is unambiguous: stay in the Bay. The talent pool is denser. The capital is more patient. The exit math is better. The complaints are just very, very loud.