‘Good riddance…’San Francisco’s message to Elon Musk on moving X headquarters to Texas

Elon Musk

In July 2024, Elon Musk announced that his social media platform X’s headquarters will be shifted from San Francisco to Texas. “Have had enough of dodging gangs of violent drug addicts just to get in and out of the building,” Musk had said in a post on X. Now, it seems like San Francisco officials aren’t really bothered about X moving its headquarters out of their city.

According to a report by The New York Times, city attorney David Chiu said that most citizen would be happy only. “I share the perspective that most San Franciscans have, which is good riddance,” he told the publication.

The report also quotes city mayor London Breed who said that she met with Musk several months ago and swapped a few text messages as well. “I am not going to beg with anyone,” she told The New York Times, before adding that she wanted companies to succeed in the city. She also suggested that Musk’s political views might have influenced his decision to leave San Francisco but didn’t provide further details.

On his part, Musk has also maintained that there were certain San Francisco policies which may have forced him to move out of the city. For instance, he said that there was San Francisco’s gross reciept tax. “Even if the severe crime problem in SF were to be solved tomorrow, X could not remain in SF and launch payments, as it would immediately fail," Musk wrote in another post on X.

As of now, X hasn’t moved out of San Francisco but has told employees that it soon will. However, the company doesn’t plan to leave the state of California. Linda Yaccarino, CEO of X, had told employees that X will move out of San Francisco but in Palo Alto and San Jose — both are in California.

According to the report, Ted Egan, San Francisco’s chief economist, has stated that X’s influence on the local economy has dwindled significantly, to the point where its departure would likely have minimal impact. “In many respects, they were already gone,” he told The New York Times in reference to X moving out.