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Elon Musk said he is moving more of his business empire to Texas. Musk-run X and SpaceX will shift their corporate headquarters to the Lone Star State from California, he wrote in a series of posts on X on Tuesday. He didn’t provide a timeline for the move, but he was clear about his rationale.
“This is the final straw,” Musk commented on a post about a new California law protecting the privacy of transgender children. “Because of this law and the many others that preceded it, attacking both families and companies, SpaceX will now move its HQ from Hawthorne, California, to Starbase, Texas.” He then added that “X HQ will move to Austin” from San Francisco and that he’s “had enough of dodging gangs of violent drug addicts just to get in and out of the building.”
Headquarter moves can start out as symbolic but can be hugely consequential for states such as California if staff relocate, as their budgets rely on taxing high-flying tech workers.
California’s rules have long drawn the ire of Musk. He said in 2020 that he had personally relocated to Texas, a move that could spare him California’s high taxes. The next year, he moved Tesla’s headquarters to Austin from Silicon Valley over frustrations about local pandemic restrictions allegedly hampering operations. “Frankly, this is the final straw,” he tweeted at the time. Musk’s tunnel-digging operation Boring Company ditched California for Texas in 2022.
The new measure attracting Musk’s scorn was signed into law Monday by California governor Gavin Newsom. It bars schools from requiring staff to disclose a student’s gender identity, gender expression, or sexual orientation without the student’s permission. The law overrides policies passed by local school boards that had required educators to tell parents if their children showed signs of being transgender.
“I did make it clear to Governor Newsom about a year ago that laws of this nature would force families and companies to leave California to protect their children,” Musk wrote in his series of posts on Tuesday.
Newsom declined to provide a comment to WIRED, but his office pointed out that California law still requires parental consent for kids to change their names and that parents also are guaranteed access to education records.
The issue of parents’ rights is personal for Musk. Last year a biography of Musk by Walter Isaacson revealed that the billionaire blamed the school of his oldest child for exposing her to certain ideals that led to her transitioning to female and excluding him from her life.
After Musk bought Twitter in 2022, he began allowing users to post transgender people’s former names, or deadnames, and according to activists, he has eased policing anti-LGBTQ content.
A spokesperson for GLAAD, which advocates for trans rights, says it wasn't surprising to see someone "with a long history of hateful rhetoric" take advantage of the new law to push questionable views. "The state of California’s support for transgender and nonbinary students does not harm students or parents, but creates a model for all leaders in education to ensure LGBTQ student safety and privacy," says the spokesperson who requested anonymity to avoid harassment.
X, SpaceX, and Newsom did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Texas governor Greg Abbott, in a post on X, cheered the move of SpaceX to Texas.
Other Musk companies remain rooted in California. His OpenAI challenger xAI is based in the San Francisco Bay Area city of Burlingame. Brain implant startup Neuralink is across the bay in Fremont. And though Tesla moved its business base to Texas, Musk has kept significant manufacturing operations in Fremont and last year announced an engineering headquarters for the electric-car maker in Palo Alto.
Update 7/16/24 7:48pm ET: This story has been updated to include comment from GLAAD and Gavin Newsom's office.
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