The Vinnova Silicon Valley Office located at Stanford University is a way for the agency to facilitate connections between the Swedish Innovation System and the ecosystem of Silicon Valley.
Silicon Valley is a world-leading ecosystem of actors that collaborate to identify new opportunities, shape companies and scale digital innovations in a global market. The close interaction with leading universities and the strong presence of venture capital contribute to creating an effective innovation system. In addition to its importance as a place for technology development, Silicon Valley has also come to shape social development in other respects in recent years.
Vinnova is located in Silicon Valley and develops the innovation ecosystem between Sweden and California. Our efforts focus on Swedish areas of strength. This leads to the development of knowledge and expertise and increases the visibility of Sweden as an attractive country to collaborate with.
The focus of the world's research and development in AI is largely concentrated in Silicon Valley. Several international companies with Swedish connections choose to locate business-critical development activities in Silicon Valley, for example Ericsson, Volvo Cars and Volvo Group.
There is a genuine openness to collaboration and there is ongoing knowledge development through collaboration between different actors (especially academia, startups and companies) on site. This is characterized by formal and informal networks where collaborations take different forms and are often confirmed in project of various kinds.
Together with the other Nordic countries, Vinnova has created Nordic Innovation House (NIH) in Palo Alto to support Nordic actors to take part in Silicon Valley's ecosystem. NIH is a collaboration platform that offers access to the innovation system in Silicon Valley for various actors. The largest target group is young companies with ambitions to scale up their activities and become competitive in an international market. But also established companies, which carry out various forms of development work, gather around NIH. The latest Swedish members are the Swedish Energy Agency, Drive Sweden and Linköping University.
Through the Tech Incubator (TINC) accelerator program, young Swedish knowledge- and technology-intensive companies can validate their technology and business model in the American market at Silicon Valley. REACH is our incubator program where research ideas can be validated.
In the wake of the coronavirus, parts of Nordic Innovation House's operations have been digitalized. A number of webinars are being offered under the name Bifrost Talks.
The Wallenberg Foundations continuously offer two educational scholarships, so-called fellowships, linked to Nordic Innovation House. The overall objective is that these fellows will be given the opportunity to develop their competence and understanding of the innovation system at Silicon Valley, and subsequently contribute to the renewal and strengthening of it.Swedish system.
Last updated 6 February 2025
Page manager: Inger Gustafsson
