In February 2003, to launch a new Polish-American economic initiative, the US-Polish Trade Council, with sponsorship from Lockheed Martin, LOT Polish Airlines, Exponent Inc. and IMMA Ltd., organized a meeting between corporate leadership of key Silicon Valley companies and the Polish Prime Minister Leszek Miller. This trade delegation included several government ministers as well as industry leaders in Polish information technology. The meetings were attended by leaders of American industry such as Lockheed Martin, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, Cisco Systems, Microsoft, Applied Materials, and Sun Microsystems, and announced an aggressive initiative to promote engineering and information technology development in Poland through closer U.S./Polish cooperation.
Since then a large Silicon Valley-based U.S. manufacturer of microprocessors aggressively expanded their engineering center in northern Poland. Another major Silicon Valley-based U.S. computer systems and services vendor opened a large data processing center in western Poland. Numerous American technology companies have had their awareness raised regarding opportunities in Poland. Many have proceeded to action now that their industries resumed growth.
