Elon Musk announced on X that the company formerly known as Twitter will move its San Francisco headquarters to Austin, Texas.
Musk did not reveal a timeline for the move. The company answered a request for comment with an automated response.
His post was in response to news that Gov. Gavin Newsom had signed AB 1955 into law, which would make California the first state to prohibit school districts from mandating that teachers notify parents if their children begin using different pronouns or identify as a different gender than what is listed on the school record.
And 𝕏 HQ will move to Austin https://t.co/LUDfLEsztj
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 16, 2024
“Have had enough of dodging gangs of violent drug addicts just to get in and out of the building,” Musk added in a follow-up post.
Last week, X started marketing the bulk of its Mid-Market headquarters for sublease since many of the offices remain empty after the pandemic and a massive round of layoffs.
According to several employees, X has a mandatory, five days a week, in-person office policy for its San Francisco-based workers.
Musk has savaged what he has characterized as the degradation of San Francisco’s downtown, likening the neighborhood to a “derelict zombie apocalypse.”
However, in a previous post, he pledged that X would stay in the city, even as it is offered incentives to move away.
Mayor London Breed responded to Musk’s announcement in an interview Tuesday afternoon with ABC7 in which she noted that downtown is still recovering from the pandemic, and Musk’s criticism could be seen through the lens of his pledge to give Donald Trump’s presidential campaign $45 million a month.
“I’m in that area almost every single day, and the entire block, including the alleyway, it’s pretty much empty,” Breed said. “Employees are not even coming back to work to the building, and that’s part of the problem.
“Look, we have a new normal, and people are not in the office in the same way,” she continued. “They are working in the neighborhoods and cafes and trying to find a different way to provide the work for these different companies.”
The mayor said that in recent years the city has done work “deconstructing” policies to make downtown more vibrant and mixed-use.
Previously, Musk moved Tesla’s headquarters from Palo Alto to Austin, only to move the company’s global engineering headquarters back two years later.
Musk reportedly has a strained relationship with his eldest child, who is a transgender woman. In 2022, she filed a name and gender change petition in Los Angeles Superior Court that stated she no longer wished to be associated with her biological father in “any way, shape or form.”
In a subsequent sit down with the Financial Times, Musk blamed her school for teaching what he called “full-blown communism” for causing the rift.
Musk’s biographer Walter Isaacson wrote last year that the episode had “pained” the mercurial tech mogul.
This is a developing story and will be updated.