Tesla Officially Moves Headquarters from California to Texas

Elon Musk, founder and CEO of SpaceX, participates in a press conference at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., on May 27, 2020. Saul Martinez/Getty Images

Tesla founder and chief executive Elon Musk has made good on his promise to relocate the company’s headquarters from Palo Alto, California, to Austin, Texas, with a Dec. 1 regulatory filing making the move official.

“On December 1, 2021, Tesla, Inc. relocated its corporate headquarters to Gigafactory Texas at 13101 Harold Green Road, Austin, Texas 78725,” states the filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which bears the signature of Tesla Chief Financial Officer Zachary Kirkhorn.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott took to Twitter to acknowledge the move, saying that Tesla is now “officially” headquartered in the Lone Star State.

The filing formalizes the process of Tesla relocating its headquarters from California to Texas, a move Musk promised in October he would make, though at the time he provided no timeline.

Musk told the company’s annual meeting on Oct. 7 that he was excited about the relocation, while making clear the move didn’t mean Tesla was winding down operations in California.

“To be clear we will be continuing to expand our activities in California,” Musk said at the time. “Our intention is to increase output from Fremont and Giga Nevada by 50 percent. If you go to our Fremont factory it’s jammed.”

Musk said at the time that high housing costs in California were squeezing Tesla’s ability to scale up in the Bay Area.

Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk takes the stage to speak at the National Governors Association Summer Meeting in Providence, Rhode Island, on July 15, 2017. Brian Snyder/Reuters

The move comes after Musk confirmed late last year that he had relocated from California to Texas and now calls the Lone Star State his home. That came after his feud earlier in 2020 with local authorities over pandemic-related shutdown orders.

After Tesla’s Fremont plant was shuttered in March 2020 following a COVID-19-related shelter-in-place order, Musk sued Alameda County, seeking an injunction against the order and threatening to move his company’s headquarters out of state.

New Tesla electric vehicles are seen in a lot at Tesla’s primary vehicle factory in Fremont, Calif., on May 11, 2020. Stephen Lam/Reuters

“Frankly, this is the final straw. Tesla will now move its HQ and future programs to Texas/Nevada immediately. If we even retain Fremont manufacturing activity at all, it will be dependent on how Tesla is treated in the future. Tesla is the last carmaker left in CA,” Musk wrote in a tweet at the time.

Tesla later dropped the suit against Alameda County, according to documents filed in a California court on May 20 (pdf), a day after California Gov. Gavin Newsom told CNBC that the state was committed to the electric car maker’s success and that he was “not worried about Elon leaving any time soon.”

In July, Musk announced that Tesla would build its next U.S. factory near Austin, with an expected 5,000 hires and an investment of around $1 billion.

Musk told The Wall Street Journal when announcing his decision to relocate to Texas that he believes California has become complacent as a locus of innovative companies, saying, “California’s been winning for a long time and I think they’re taking it for granted, a little bit.”