Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of X (formerly Twitter), has announced plans to close the company’s San Francisco office within the coming weeks, following his decision to relocate X’s headquarters to Texas.
The New York Post reports that the closure of X’s San Francisco office, as revealed in a staff memo by CEO Linda Yaccarino on Monday, marks a significant shift in the company’s operations. Yaccarino described the decision as “the right one for our company in the long term” and assured employees that leadership is actively working on plans to support those directly impacted by the move, including transportation options.
As part of the transition, X will transfer its Bay Area operations to existing and new locations, such as an office in San Jose and a recently established engineering-focused shared space in Palo Alto, which will also house Musk’s artificial intelligence startup xAI.
Musk’s decision to relocate X’s headquarters to Texas comes amidst his ongoing clash with California Governor Gavin Newsom over the state’s new controversial student gender identity law. The law prohibits school districts from requiring teachers to inform parents about changes in a student’s gender identity or sexual orientation without the child’s consent. Musk claims to have warned Governor Newsom a year ago that such laws would compel families and companies to leave California to safeguard their children.
The billionaire entrepreneur has also expressed his dissatisfaction with the living conditions in San Francisco, citing the need to “dodge gangs of violent drug addicts” to enter and exit the building. This sentiment likely contributed to his decision to move the company’s headquarters.
Since acquiring the social media platform for $44 billion in late 2022, Musk has faced several challenges with local authorities. Last year, the firm that owns the building housing X offices on San Francisco’s Market Street filed a lawsuit against Musk’s company for allegedly failing to pay rent. The suit was eventually dropped in March.
In a separate development, Musk has filed a new lawsuit against OpenAI and its co-founders, Sam Altman and Greg Brockman, just weeks after dropping a similar suit against the company behind ChatGPT. Musk, who co-founded OpenAI in 2015 but later left its board due to disagreements over its direction, claims that Altman and his allies “intentionally courted and deceived” him into financing the startup with more than $44 million in its early years. The suit alleges that OpenAI’s leaders abandoned their mission to develop advanced AI for the benefit of humanity in favor of enriching themselves and key investor Microsoft.
Read more at the New York Post here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship.
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