[5][6] Co-stars include T.J. Miller, Josh Brener, Martin Starr, Kumail Nanjiani, Zach Woods, Amanda Crew, Matt Ross, and Jimmy O. Yang.

Richard Hendricks, an employee of a tech company named Hooli, creates in his spare time an app called Pied Piper that contains a revolutionary data compression algorithm.

Peter Gregory acquires a stake in Pied Piper, and Richard hires the residents of Erlich Bachman's business incubator, including Bertram Gilfoyle and Dinesh Chugtai, along with Jared Dunn, who also defected from Hooli.

Meanwhile Richard's best friend, Nelson "Big Head" Bighetti, chooses to accept a substantial promotion at Hooli instead, despite his lack of merit for the job.

The next morning, he makes Pied Piper's final presentation and demonstrates a product that strongly outperforms Nucleus; he is mobbed by eager investors.

Due to Jack wasting all their money on offices and useless marketing, a cash strapped Richard hires contract engineers from around the world to help construct their application platform.

Richard steps down as CEO of Pied Piper, and instead begins working on a new project: a decentralized, peer-to-peer internet, that would be powered by a network of cell phones without any firewalls, viruses, or government regulations.

Meanwhile, due to the losses incurred in launching the unsuccessful Signature Box 3, Hooli's board of directors announce plans that force Belson to sell the company to Amazon and Jeff Bezos.

He is shocked to learn that Colin's online game Gates of Galloo, part of the Pied Piper family, has been collecting user data the entire time.

Gavin, free from his Hooli position, launches a new campaign for "Tethics" (tech ethics) which leads to an investigation that would tie up Pied Piper's business dealings.

Instead of quitting, Richard integrates Gilfoyle's AI (with some edits from Dinesh) into PiperNet and it works better than anyone could have expected, allowing Pied Piper to close a deal with AT&T.

However, the team soon realizes that in this effort to maximize compression and efficiency, PiperNet's AI has found a way to bypass all encryption, causing a potential global threat if launched.

[7] He recollects also how startup companies pitched to him to make a Flash-based animation in the past as material for the first episode: "It was one person after another going, 'In two years, you will not own a TV set!'

[9] Christopher Evan Welch, who played billionaire Peter Gregory, died in December 2013 of lung cancer, having finished his scenes for the first five episodes.

[10] The production team decided against recasting the role and reshooting his scenes; on his death, Judge commented: "The brilliance of Chris' performance is irreplaceable, and inspired us in our writing of the series.

"[19] However, when asked if Judge had reached out about writing him out or if he inquired about reducing his load prior to being offered his season five contract, Miller said he did not, and that the idea was first broached entirely at that meeting.

[24] The first season's title sequence featured references to Apple, Netscape, SGI, Intel, eBay, PayPal, LinkedIn, Zynga, MySpace, Twitter, Napster, YouTube, Pets.com, Energy Pod, Google (including Chrome and Android), AOL, Facebook, Blogger, Adobe, Yahoo!, Oracle, and Hewlett-Packard.

[27] In season 4, references were added for Reddit, Snapchat, Pinterest, Airbnb, Yelp, KIND Financial, Dropbox, Twitch, Nest, Vine, Theranos, Slack, DiDi, Samsung, and Waymo.

Rotten Tomatoes presented the first season with a 95% rating and an average score of 7.9 out of 10 based on 57 reviews, with the critical consensus "Silicon Valley is a relevant, often hilarious take on contemporary technology and the geeks who create it that benefits from co-creator Mike Judge's real-life experience in the industry.

[33] Tim Goodman of The Hollywood Reporter said "HBO finds its best and funniest full-on comedy in years with this Mike Judge creation, and it may even tap into that most elusive thing, a wide audience.

"[34] Matt Roush of TV Guide said "The deft, resonant satire that helped make Judge's Office Space a cult hit takes on farcical new dimension in Silicon Valley, which introduces a socially maladroit posse of computer misfits every bit the comic equal of The Big Bang Theory's science nerds.

"[36] Brian Tallerico of RogerEbert.com praised the jokes of the series but commented on the slow progression of the character development in the first two episodes and the reliance on common stereotypes in technology, including "the nerd who can't even look at a girl much less talk to her or touch her, the young businessman who literally shakes when faced with career potential".

"Because I'm a software engineer, Silicon Valley might portray me with my pants up to my armpits, nerdily and nasally complaining that Thomas' compression algorithm is impossible or that nine times F in hexadecimal is 87, not 'fleventy five' (as Erlich says), but I would forgive such slips in a second if the show were funny.

The site's consensus reads, "Silicon Valley re-ups its comedy quotient with an episode that smooths out the rough edges left behind by the loss of a beloved cast member.

The site's consensus reads, "Silicon Valley's fourth season advances the veteran comedy's overall arc while adding enough new wrinkles – and delivering more than enough laughs – to stay fresh.

The site's consensus reads, "Five seasons in, Silicon Valley finds a new way to up the ante with tighter, less predictable plots, while still maintaining its clever brand of comedic commentary.

The site's consensus reads, "Though the strangeness of reality threatens to one-up it, Silicon Valley's final season is funny, fearless, and still playing by its own rules to the very end.

"[49] In response to Musk's comments, actor T.J. Miller, who plays Erlich on the show, pointed out that "if the billionaire power players don't get the joke, it's because they're not comfortable being satirized...

[51] In conference talks, Douglas Crockford has called Silicon Valley "the best show ever made about programming", citing the episode "Bachmanity Insanity" to illustrate the absurdity of the tabs versus spaces argument.

[76] The second season was released on DVD and Blu-ray on April 19, 2016; bonus features include six audio commentaries, a behind-the-scenes featurette, and deleted scenes.