San Francisco officials aren’t too upset about X owner Elon Musk’s plans to pull his social media company out of the city.
“I agree with the majority of San Franciscans: This is good,” city attorney David Chiu told The New York Times.
In July, Musk announced that X would move its headquarters from San Francisco to Austin after California passed a law banning “the forcing of LGBTQ+ students to come out in schools.”
Musk has promoted anti-transgender content on his platform in the past, which his daughter, Vivian Jenna Wilson, who is transgender, criticized.
Elon Musk said X’s headquarters will move from San Francisco to Austin. Slaven Vlasik/Getty Images
Last month, the billionaire also expressed frustration with San Francisco’s “gross sales tax.”
“Even if San Francisco’s serious crime problem were solved tomorrow, X could not stay in San Francisco and start making payments. It would go bankrupt immediately,” Musk wrote to X.
It’s not entirely clear when X plans to relocate to Texas.
The Times reported earlier this month that X CEO Linda Yaccarino told staff the company would be relocating to an office in San Jose and opening one in Palo Alto — notably, both are cities in California.
“This is an important decision that will affect many of you, but it is the right decision for our company in the long term,” the memo said.
Meanwhile, local officials in San Francisco appear to support Musk’s decision to relocate.
Mayor London Breed told the Times that despite meeting and exchanging text messages with Musk “several months ago,” she had not made any oversight to persuade Mr. X to stay in San Francisco.
“I’m not going to beg anybody,” Breed said.
Breed said she believes Musk’s increasingly conservative politics may have influenced his departure.
Musk’s time at the helm of Twitter (which rebranded to X last year) has been tumultuous: After acquiring the company in 2022, he laid off hundreds of employees, then laid off a second batch on the eve of Thanksgiving.
San Francisco’s chief economist, Ted Egan, said X’s presence has been significantly reduced and its disappearance would not have an impact on the local economy.
“In many ways, they were already gone,” he told the outlet.
A representative for Musk did not immediately respond to Business Insider’s request for comment.
