The First Minister, in a speech in San Francisco this morning, said Scotland's growing marine energy industry would turn the country into an international centre of excellence with potentially huge economic and environmental rewards.
Silicon Valley became a beacon for the computer and internet revolution from the mid-1990s after attracting Apple's Steve Jobs, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and many other related industries.
Mr Salmond told the Commonwealth Club of California that Glasgow was the premier centre in Europe for offshore wind research, with Strathclyde University's £90 million Technology and Innovation Centre a hub for researchers and industry to work together on pioneering technology.
He told the club, whose previous speakers include Theodore Roosevelt, Martin Luther King, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton: "Scotland is becoming the Silicon Valley of marine energy worldwide.
"Having been at the heart of the marine engineering revolution of the 19th century, we are now placing ourselves at the heart of the marine engineering revolution of the 21st century."
Mr Salmond also said Scotland's huge contribution to the world was matched by its future ambitions.
He said: "We are ambitious for the future, both for ourselves and what we can contribute to the rest of the world."
Mr Salmond said Silicon Valley
began by creating a community of technical scholars, that big business followed the skills, big rewards came after that and "the same is happening in Scotland in our marine energy sector".
He said: "All 12 of Scotland's major universities have formed the Energy Technology Partnership, which earlier this year agreed a unique collaboration with Abu Dhabi's prestigious Masdar Energy Institute.
"There are more different types of wave and tidal devices in the waters around Scotland than in the rest of the world combined and the Pentland Firth and Orkney waters leasing area is the world's largest commercial scale marine energy site."
The First Minister added that Scotland possessed 10% of Europe's wave power resources and 25% of its offshore wind and tidal resources – all with only 1% of the EU population.
