Musk returns to California with frustration
The Tesla Headquarters left Silicon Valley several years ago, and now Elon Musk wants to relocate the seats of his other companies to Texas. His reasons are also of an ideological nature.
Tech billionaire Elon Musk is moving the headquarters of his space company SpaceX and the online platform X from California to Texas. He cited a California law that makes it difficult for parents to be informed about their children's sexual orientation as the reason. Now, the consent of the children is required. "That's the last straw," Musk wrote on X. "Due to this law and the many before it that attack families and companies," the central offices of both firms will be moving.
Musk, who was once a Democrat party member, has now found his political home on the American right. He has been vocal against the medical care for teenagers who do not identify with their biological gender. According to his biography published last year, this also has a personal background. One of his older children underwent a gender change and no longer wants to have contact with Musk, as his biographer Walter Isaacson wrote.
SpaceX had its headquarters in Hawthorne in the Greater Los Angeles Area - large parts of the facilities, including the rocket ramps, have already been relocated to Texas. The site named Starbase is expected to become the future headquarters of the company.
"Bands of violent drug addicts"
X had its headquarters in San Francisco until now - and is expected to move to Austin. Musk accompanied the announcement with a jab at the city, which is seen as in decline in conservative political circles. He had had enough of hiding from "bands of violent drug addicts" just to get into the building, Musk wrote on X. The Tech Billionaire is always accompanied by several bodyguards and only has to walk a few meters between his car and the building entrance.
Musk is also CEO of the electric car manufacturer Tesla. The company moved from Palo Alto in California's Silicon Valley to Austin. This was mainly a reaction to the lockdowns at the beginning of the Corona Pandemic, which also temporarily paralyzed Tesla's production in its California plant in Fremont. Musk called the restrictions designed to protect people from infection "fascist".
Behind the relocation announcement, there may not only be ideological reasons. According to the "Financial Times", Texas attracts companies with low taxes and less regulation. Between 2015 and April of this year, nearly 300 companies have announced, according to government figures, that they plan to relocate their headquarters to Texas. More than half of these, it seems, came from California.
- Following his dissatisfaction with California's regulatory environment and a specific law, Elon Musk decided to relocate both SpaceX and X, formerly known as Twitter, from their California headquarters to Texas.
- In a bold move echoing his discontent with the city's perceived decline, Musk announced the relocation of X's headquarters from San Francisco to Austin, citing the presence of 'bands of violent drug addicts' as one of the reasons.
- The Texas economy, which offers lower taxes and less regulation, has attracted numerous companies seeking to relocate, including over half of the 300 companies that announced their intentions between 2015 and 2022, many of which have come from California.
