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Silicon Valley is stirring back to life, following a bruising economic downturn, according to industry insiders and start-up entrepreneurs.

The view seems to underscore Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke’s belief that the US recession has ended.

He told a Washington think-tank that “from a technical perspective the recession is very likely over”.

Wall Street shares that optimism – with the Dow Jones having been on a steady rise for the last six months.

“In the Valley we are seeing real signs of life,” said Satish Dharmaraj, a partner with Redpoint Ventures, a firm specialising in internet start-ups.

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Silicon Valley California

“We are seeing an enormous amount of really good companies coming up and good people leaving their jobs and joining start-ups, which is always a sign of confidence,” Mr Dharmaraj told BBC News.

Recent acquisitions in the hi-tech field include the purchase of Mint.com by Intuit for $170m (£102m), Adobe buying Omniture for $1.8bn (£1.08bn), the sale of Skype to a private equity syndicate for $2bn (£1.2bn) and the purchase of SpringSource by VMware for $420m (£254m).

“Looks like the economy, and with it the urge to splurge, is back – especially in Silicon Valley,” said Om Malik of tech blog Gigaom.com.

“What’s even more encouraging is that none of these deals are the small micro – transactions that Silicon Valley got used to over the past few years,” he added.