X owner Elon Musk’s plan to move the social media platform’s headquarters out of San Francisco has some city officials eager to bid farewell to the billionaire’s business.
“I share the perspective that most San Franciscans have, which is good riddance,” city attorney David Chiu told The New York Times.
The outlet noted that San Francisco Mayor London Breed said she had met with Musk “several months ago” but that she didn’t extend offers aimed at keeping X in the city, saying, “I’m not going to beg anybody.”
The report comes after Musk announced last month that he will move the company’s headquarters to Texas in response to a new law enacted by the state of California that prohibits schools from notifying parents if their children want to change their gender identity.
Musk said at the time that X’s headquarters would move to Austin, Texas, while he also announced that SpaceX would relocate its headquarters from Hawthorne, California, to Starbase, Texas.
He cited the gender identity law as being “the final straw” and attributed the move to “this law and the many others that preceded it, attacking both families and companies.”
The billionaire has been critical of policies enabling gender transitions for children and in a recent interview with Dr. Jordan Peterson said he was “essentially tricked into signing documents” for his child Xavier, who now goes by Vivian Jenna Wilson, to be treated with puberty blockers.
“I lost my son, essentially. They call it deadnaming for a reason. The reason it’s called deadnaming is because your son is dead. My son Xavier is dead, killed by the woke mind virus,” Musk said. “I vowed to destroy the woke mind virus after that.”
In early August, the Times reported that X CEO Linda Yaccarino told the company’s employees that Bay Area workers would move to an existing office in San Jose and a new office focused on engineering in Palo Alto.
Shortly after Musk announced in July that X would move out of San Francisco, he mentioned issues with the “crazy gross receipts city tax” making it “impossible for financial companies to operate in San Francisco.”
“That’s why Stripe, Block (CashApp), VISA and many others were forced out of San Francisco, as ‘gross receipts’ came to be defined as all transactions processed by a company, even if NOT revenue. That meant companies processing payments either had to leave SF or die,” Musk said last month. “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.”
The decision to move X out of San Francisco comes a year after Musk said the social media platform formerly known as Twitter would maintain its presence in the city despite having received offers aimed at incentivizing the company he acquired for $44 billion to relocate.
Musk also said at the time that X would remain in San Francisco despite the city facing a “doom spiral” with companies leaving the city and causing its tax base to decline further.
“Many have offered rich incentives for X (fka Twitter) to move its HQ out of San Francisco. Moreover, the city is in a doom spiral with one company after another left or leaving. Therefore, they expect X will move too. We will not,” Musk explained on X last July. “You only know who your real friends are when the chips are down. San Francisco, beautiful San Francisco, though others forsake you, we will always be your friend.”
