X Reportedly Closing San Francisco Office Amid Elon Musk’s Anti-California Turn

Updated 9:00 a.m. Wednesday

Social media platform X is reportedly closing its office in San Francisco, where the company formerly known as Twitter was founded in 2006 and moved into its Market Street headquarters in 2011.

In an internal email from CEO Linda Yaccarino — first obtained by The New York Times and reported by other outlets — employees were informed that the office would be closing “in the coming weeks,” with employees relocated to a San Jose office or a new engineering-focused space in Palo Alto.

X did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but a city spokesperson said officials were aware of the plans.

“We are aware of Elon’s plans to move a small remaining number of employees from X’s HQ out of San Francisco,” Parisa Safarzadeh, the deputy communications director for Mayor London Breed’s office, said via email. “Our focus remains on working with and supporting the many businesses that call S.F. home, from global headquarters to leading AI companies, and thousands of small businesses.”

The reports come after Elon Musk, who owns X, announced last month on the social media platform that he would move its headquarters to Austin, Texas, taking swipes at Democratic leadership in San Francisco and California.

On July 16, he tweeted that he “had enough of dodging gangs of violent drug addicts just to get in and out of the building.” The social media tirade was spurred by Gov. Gavin Newsom’s signing of a bill that prevents schools from requiring parental notification if a student identifies as transgender. Musk tweeted that the bill was the “final straw” and that both SpaceX and X would be moving headquarters from California to Texas as a result — eventually leading his transgender daughter to denounce him as a cruel and absent father.

“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 on X.

Earlier in July, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that San Francisco real estate firm JLL had been hired to sublease X’s office on 1355 Market St. X had been accused of failing to pay rent for the office, but a lawsuit filed by the landlord was dismissed this year.

In a statement, a spokesperson said only that the company had been “hired to sublease X’s excess space at 1355 Market and all of the adjacent building, One Tenth St.”