Musk is moving his operations out of California and has criticized San Francisco online, but city officials say X's departure will not have a major impact.
Elon Musk is moving X out of its San Francisco headquarters and the city government says it doesn't care.
The billionaire announced plans earlier this month to take X out of California and move its headquarters to Texas. Musk said on X he had “no choice” but to move, claiming “it's impossible to work in San Francisco when you're processing payments.” He has also been critical of other tax policies in the city and California for years.
Musk may have another reason for leaving California, however. In July, he responded to posts about the state's legislation supporting LGBT+ students, calling it “the last straw” by declaring he would move SpaceX to Texas.
“Because of this law and many others before it that attacked both families and businesses, SpaceX will now move its headquarters from Hawthorne, California, to Starbase, Texas,” he said.
The New York Times reacted only lukewarmly to this move by the authorities in San Francisco. City Attorney David Chiu claimed that he shared the view of “most San Francisco residents” that it was “good that we get rid of them.”
San Francisco chief economist Ted Egan said the company's departure would have little impact because it had already shrunk significantly and “in many ways was already gone.” X did not respond to NYT requests for comment.
The company, formerly known as Twitter, was hit by a significant number of job cuts following Musk's acquisition in October 2022. By January 2023, internal records viewed by CNBC showed that the company's full-time employee count had fallen to about 1,300, compared to about 8,000 before Musk's acquisition.
Since then, Twitter's rebranding to X has caused problems in San Francisco. The company's headquarters was “upgraded” in 2023 with a large, glowing X logo on the roof of the building, but the brightness of that logo led to complaints from neighbors.
Even then, Musk was becoming increasingly critical of San Francisco, claiming that the city was in a “vicious spiral of one company after another leaving or leaving the location.” But he also claimed that X would be different, despite being given “huge incentives” to go elsewhere.
“San Francisco, beautiful San Francisco, even when others let you down, we will always be your friend,” Musk said in a post.
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Elon Musk at the UK AI Summit 2023. Image: Rory Arnold/No 10 Downing Street via Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
