Lone Star State —
Elon Musk revealed he had moved to Texas earlier this week.
Timothy B. Lee
–
Enlarge / Oracle’s previous headquarters in Redwood City, California.
Oracle is moving its global headquarters from Silicon Valley to Austin, Texas, the company announced in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
“Oracle is implementing a more flexible employee work location policy and has changed its Corporate Headquarters from Redwood City, California, to Austin, Texas,” Oracle wrote in its quarterly SEC filing. “We believe these moves best position Oracle for growth and provide our personnel with more flexibility about where and how they work.”
The company will continue to maintain an office at its previous headquarters in Redwood City, California, and other offices around the country. Oracle has 135,000 employees.
Bloomberg reports that Oracle opened an Austin campus in 2018 hoping to take advantage of the region’s lower cost of living. The campus was designed to host 10,000 employees.
The skyrocketing cost of real estate in the San Francisco Bay Area—and perhaps California’s high taxes—have encouraged a growing number of Silicon Valley companies to move operations outside of California. The pandemic has also forced companies to rely more on remote work, making it easier for companies to decentralize their workforces.
HP Enterprise, an enterprise software company that was spun off from the original HP in 2015, moved its headquarters to the Houston area last week. This week, Elon Musk revealed he had personally moved to Texas to be closer to SpaceX’s Boca Chica launch facility (where Starship is being tested) and Tesla’s new car factory in the Austin area.
Apple announced a major expansion of its Austin campus two years ago. Its headquarters continues to be in Silicon Valley.
Palantir also recently announced that it was leaving Silicon Valley, but it is moving to Colorado.
Oracle founder Larry Ellison is one of the most high-profile supporters of Donald Trump in the technology sector, so he may find that he fits in better in the more conservative state. It’s not clear if Ellison is personally moving to Texas. Ellison sits on Tesla’s board.