The best machine learning bootcamps in Austin

The motto of Texas’s capital may be “Keep Austin Weird,” but the laid-back city is also referred to as Silicon Hills thanks to its large tech sector. Dell is considered the flagship of the city’s tech space, but Apple, 3M, Hewlett-Packard, Google, IBM, Facebook, and eBay and PayPal also have offices in the region. Local startups include HomeAway and Main Street Hub, both of which can thank big data for its successes.

Austin is known for having a well-educated workforce, due in part to the area’s universities. The University of Texas at Austin boasts a strong machine learning program, as well as data science and engineering programs, and many alumni have stayed after college to launch their startups in the city and mentor others in the field.

Austin enjoys many of the benefits of a big city but has a small-town, community-centric vibe. It also has a relatively low cost of living and doing business: the state has no personal income tax and a corporate tax rate of zero, two major advantages in the increasingly competitive battle to attract technology companies and startups.

In case you needed further proof of Austin’s imprint in the tech space, take a look at South by Southwest (SXSW), Austin’s annual five-day tech conference (and music festival) showcasing innovations in technology. In addition to SXSW, Austin boasts several tech hubs, including Austin Technology Incubator, located at The University of Texas, and the Techstars Austin accelerator. Walmart recently opened its first tech incubator in Austin, focused on “emerging technologies like machine learning, artificial intelligence and natural language processing to make Walmart more efficient.”