Elon Musk says X leaving SF after Newsom signs gender-identity law

Elon Musk announced Tuesday he’s moving X’s headquarters from San Francisco to Austin, Texas.

The tech billionaire, who bought the social-media platform then known as Twitter for $44 billion in late 2022 , said in a post on X that the move was partially in response to Gov. Gavin Newsom signing a bill that bars school districts from informing parents of their children’s sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression without the child’s consent.

But the announcement comes less than a week after The Examiner and other outlets reported that X has put most of its San Francisco headquarters complex up for sublease , suggesting the move had been in the works before Newsom signed the bill Monday. And it follows Musk on multiple occasions expressing a willingness to move X’s corporate base .

“This is the final straw,” Musk said in a post on X regarding the new bill. “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,” he said in a subsequent post.

Musk also announced plans to move SpaceX, his rocket company, from Hawthorne to its launch facility near Brownsville, Texas.

In an emailed statement, Newsom communications director Alex Stack argued that while the bill protects students from “forced outings” of their sexuality or gender identity, state law still requires parental consent for minors to legally change their names or gender identity and guarantees parents access to their kids’ education records.

Stack also pointed to a posting Newsom made Tuesday on X in response to Musk. In the post, Newsom shared a screen shot of another post made by Donald Trump in which he said that Musk was so obsequious at a meeting with Trump when he was president that Musk would have bent his knee to Trump if he commanded it.

Newsom’s comment — presumably directed at Musk — “You bent the knee.”

It’s unclear when X would move to Austin or how many people or positions it would transfer there. When Musk-owned Tesla moved its headquarters from Palo Alto to Austin in 2021, it kept much of its Bay Area staff, including those operating its original factory in Fremont, in place. And last year, the company announced it was opening its global engineering headquarters in Palo Alto.

X representatives did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment that included a list of questions about the move.

The nominal trigger for the announcement was Newsom’s signing of Assembly Bill 1955, which was authored by Assemblymember Christopher Ward, D-San Diego. That bill was passed in response to several conservative-leaning school boards in the state establishing policies that required schools to inform parents if their kids asked to be referred to by a different name or pronouns. The Assembly passed AB 1955 on a 61-16 vote last month after the state Senate passed it 29-8.

Representatives for Ward, co-author Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco and Gov. Newsom did not respond to requests for comment. A representative for Mayor London Breed also did not respond to a request for comment.

Musk has a transgender daughter named Jenna Wilson , from whom he is reportedly estranged. He reportedly found out about her transition not from Wilson, but from someone else. Wilson’s transition and adoption of Marxist views helped prompt his widely publicized move to embrace right-wing viewpoints , according to Walter Isaacson’s biography of him.

In recent years, Musk has proudly touted anti-diversity viewpoints, reinstated right-wing figures who were previously banned by X, promoted an antisemitic post on the service , and, most recently, reportedly announced plans to donate $45 million a month to a political action committee promoting Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.

However, Musk said on Twitter the grievances that prompted him to move X and SpaceX go beyond just AB 1955. Without going into specifics, he lambasted “the many [other California laws] that preceded it, attacking both families and companies.” In a follow-up post, he also took a shot at San Francisco’s problems with homelessness and perceived crime rates .

“Have had enough of dodging gangs of violent drug addicts just to get in and out of the building,” Musk said in the post.

The area around X’s headquarters in the Mid-Market district has struggled following the COVID-19 pandemic, in large part due to the lack of office workers. Early on in the outbreak, the company announced it would permanently allow its staff to work remotely . Musk later reversed that policy , but only as he was in the process of firing more than half of Twitter’s workers .

Meanwhile, city data have indicated that crime has fallen markedly in San Francisco . Mayor Breed published data earlier this year showing that overall crime in The City was at its lowest point in a decade, with the exception of 2020 amid pandemic-era shutdowns.

Musk’s decision to move X’s headquarters comes as San Francisco office vacancy rate recently hit at an all-time high of 36.8% amid continued widespread support for remote work and following a slump in employment in The City’s tech sector .

Because X had already drastically cut its workforce and was already scaling back its footprint in San Francisco, it's not clear exactly what impact its headquarters move will have on The City, said Rufus Jeffris, a spokesman for the Bay Area Council, which represents local business interests.

“It’s never good to lose businesses, particularly high-profile tech companies like X. It has obvious implications for the city’s reputation as a place to do business, invest and grow jobs,” Jeffris wrote in an email. “But how damaging it is remains to be seen. Meanwhile the city has emerged as a global hotbed for new AI companies and investment.”

Greg Wong contributed reporting to this story.

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