By: Hadassa Kalatizadeh

Make room San Francisco, the Silicon Valley area may soon have a match in the Hudson Valley.

As reported by the NY Post, a sleepy rural area north of New York City, known for its farmhouses and views of the Hudson River, is positioned to become the next big tech area. Chip maker Nvidia’s co-founder, Curtis Priem, told the Wall Street Journal that he wants to help transform the area. “We’ve renamed Hudson Valley as Quantum Valley,” said Priem. “It’s up to New York whether they want to become Silicon State—not just a valley.” The 64-year-old multimillionaire is reportedly donating $75 million to his alma mater, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY, so that the school can buy an IBM-made quantum computing system. The system would be the first of its kind on any campus worldwide.

Priem, who served as Nvidia’s first Chief Technology Officer and sold off most of his company stocks last year, could now have been the 16th richest person in America, with a whopping $70 billion, had he held on to his stocks, per Forbes. Currently, Priem has an estimated net worth of roughly $30 million, which includes his $6 million home near Fremont, California, where he “lives off the grid with unreliable cell service and writes unpublished manifestos” on how to solve world problems like “repairing the earth,” per TechSpot.

Priem earned a B.S. degree in electrical engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1982. He is credited with designing the first graphics processor for the PC, the IBM Professional Graphics Adapter. He was a senior staff engineer at Sun Microsystems from 1986 to 1993, where he developed the GX graphics chip, per Wikipedia. He co-founded NVIDIA in 1993, and retired from the company in 2003.

Priem said he hopes his gift will turn the Hudson Valley into the epicenter of quantum computing research, and lure in talented individuals like the ones who started billion-dollar tech firms including Microsoft, Google and Apple.

Such a monetary infusion into a local university, coupled with the encouragement of such an entrepreneur, stands to change not only the neighborhood but also the home prices at large. Troy, NY, situated slightly north of Albany, currently has a median home price list of $250,000, as per Realtor.com “We have seen big job expansion announcements from companies lead to shifts in the housing market,” says Realtor.com Chief Economist Danielle Hale.

Chip maker Nvidia’s co-founder, Curtis Priem, told the Wall Street Journal that he wants to help transform the area “At first, prices may rise as demand outpaces supply, but ultimately, developers will increase supply if that is the case,” said Local agent Shane Cahill, owner of Ventura Realty Property. “We’ve seen similar success up in Malta, NY, about 40 minutes north, with the microchip factories. That development took place mostly on vacant land. A similar revival within a city itself, instead of farmland, would certainly be interesting to witness and be a part of. Troy would be a great fit.”

Cahill said the neighborhood has room to grow, with vacant land, as well as well-structured buildings that can be converted into condos. He also said there are already many tech and engineering students, but that the students often move to find jobs.