Elon Musk is reportedly planning to close his company’s San Francisco office amid an ongoing feud with California Governor Gavin Newsom after the state passed a controversial student gender identity law.
X CEO Linda Yaccarino said in a staff memo Monday that the office closures would happen “in the coming weeks” and called the decision “the right one for our company long term.”
“For those of you based in San Francisco, I know this will impact you in many different ways. Leadership is actively working on a plan that will include transportation options for those directly impacted.” “We are pleased to announce that we have signed a memo with the President and CEO,” Yaccarino added in the memo, according to a copy of the memo obtained by Fortune.
Last month, Musk announced he was moving his social media app’s headquarters to Texas, calling Newsom’s decision the “final straw.”
The new law prohibits school districts from requiring teachers to inform parents about changes in a student’s gender identity or sexual orientation without the student’s permission.
Yaccarino said X would relocate operations to new “key hubs” for its Bay Area employees, including its existing offices in San Jose and a “new shared space focused on engineering” in Palo Alto, which was to be home to Musk’s artificial intelligence startup, xAI.
The Post has reached out to Mr X for comment.
While announcing the move, the billionaire also criticized San Francisco’s crime-ridden living conditions.
“I’m tired of having to avoid gangs of violent drug addicts just to get in and out of my building,” Musk wrote to X on July 16.
Musk has repeatedly clashed with local authorities since buying the company, formerly known as Twitter, in late 2022 for $44 billion.
Last month, he publicly denounced Gov. Gavin Newsom’s decision to sign into law a ban on students disclosing their gender identity, and said he would relocate both his company and privately held SpaceX to Texas.
“I made it clear to Governor Newsom nearly a year ago that such a law would force families and businesses to leave California to protect our children,” Musk said.
Last year, SRI Nine Market Square, which owns X’s headquarters building on Market Street in San Francisco, sued Musk’s company for behind on rent payments.
The landlord dropped the lawsuit in March.
Separately on Monday, Musk filed a new lawsuit against OpenAI and co-founders Sam Altman and Greg Brockman, just weeks after dropping a similar lawsuit against the company behind ChatGPT.
Musk co-founded OpenAI in 2015 but later stepped down from the board due to differences over its direction, and in his California lawsuit he described his dispute with Altman and others as “a classic tale of altruism and greed.”
Musk’s lawyers allege that OpenAI and its executives “intentionally misled and deceived” Musk into providing more than $44 million in early stage funding to the startup.
According to the lawsuit, Altman and his associates claimed to be developing advanced AI for the benefit of humanity, but ultimately abandoned that mission to benefit themselves and their lead investor, Microsoft.
