New York metropolitan area to take advantage of New Jersey's relatively lower commercial real estate and rental prices, while offering continued geographic proximity to Manhattan's financial industry ecosystem. Silicon Alley, centered in New York City, has evolved into a metonym for the sphere encompassing the metropolitan region's high technology industries involving the Internet, new media, financial technology ("fintech"), telecommunications, digital media, software development, biotechnology, game design, and other fields within information technology that are supported by its entrepreneurship ecosystem and venture capital investments. In 2015, Silicon Alley generated over US$7.3 billion in venture capital investment, most based in Manhattan, as well as in Brooklyn,
CADRE Laboratory for New Media is the second oldest media lab in the United States and has a long and notable list of alumni. CADRE offers BFA and MFA degrees in Digital Media Art. CADRE has published SWITCH, an online journal of new media, since 1995. SWITCH and CADRE were early centers of the net.art movement that coincided with the Dot-com bubble in nearby Silicon Valley. The CADRE labs have historically worked closely with the ZeroOne Biennial, one of the foremost new media art exhibitions in the world. In 2006, CADRE, along with SJSU served as the academic hosts for the ISEA symposium and ZeroOne