Billionaire Elon Musk announced plans to move the headquarters of SpaceX and social media company X from California to Texas.
Musk posted on X Tuesday that SpaceX will relocate from Hawthorne, California, to the company’s rocket launch site, dubbed Starbase, in Texas. The headquarters of X will move from San Francisco to Austin.
He cited a new law signed Monday by California Gov. Gavin Newsom, which bars school districts from requiring staff to notify parents of a child’s gender identification change, as the “final straw.”
“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,” Musk wrote.
Tesla, where Musk is CEO, moved its corporate headquarters to Austin from Palo Alto, California, in 2021.
Musk has also said that he has moved his residence from California to Texas, where there is no state personal income tax.
SpaceX builds and launches its massive Starship rockets from the southern tip of Texas at Boca Chica Beach, near the Mexican border, at a site called Starbase. The company’s smaller Falcon 9 rockets take off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, and Southern California.
Starbase is located just below South Padre Island, about 20 miles from Brownsville.
