Elon Musk announced Tuesday he will move the headquarters of his companies X and SpaceX from California to Texas.
In a post on Twitter/X, Musk cited California’s new law banning school transgender notification requirements as one of the reasons for the move, calling it the “last straw” and saying such bills “[attack] both families and companies”.
“This is the final straw. 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,” Musk wrote. Hawthorne is a suburb in the Los Angeles metro area.
He added later: “And X HQ will move to Austin … Many will follow.”
Signed into law by the California governor, Gavin Newsom, on Monday, the bill will prohibit school policies that require parents to be alerted if their child wishes to change pronouns or identifies as transgender. The legislation comes after several school districts in the state put such rules in place.
“The state will take away your kids in California,” Musk added in a subsequent post on X.
Musk has been criticized for his inflammatory statements about transgender people in the past, including regarding his own daughter, who asserted in court documents: “I no longer live with or wish to be related to my biological father in any way, shape or form.” She legally changed her name and gender recognition. Musk’s biographer said the CEO blamed his daughter’s art school for changing her politics to “full-on communism”.
Musk also previously stated on X that he “will be actively lobbying to criminalize” gender-affirming care for transgender youth. A 2023 report from the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) found tweets accusing people of the LGBTQ+ community of “grooming children for sexual abuse” had increased 119% since Musk purchased Twitter in 2022. Musk later sued the CCDH over the report, alleging its “misleading claims” scared away advertisers. The case was thrown out in 2024.
Musk in 2023 quietly revoked X’s rules protecting users from being purposefully misgendered or deadnamed – using a transgender person’s name from before they transitioned. Those policies were again reinstated in 2024.
The movement of Musk-owned headquarters will affect thousands of employees across X and SpaceX, as both require employees to work in their offices. After acquiring X in 2022, Musk ordered almost all his employees to return to the office, demanding that they be “extremely hardcore”. Earlier this month, Twitter began seeking sublessees for its 800,000 sq ft office in downtown San Francisco.
Musk in February said he moved SpaceX’s incorporation from Delaware to Texas after a Delaware judge invalidated his $56bn pay package from his electric vehicle company Tesla. Shareholders voted to uphold the pay package in late June.
Reuters contributed to this report