Oracle moves headquarters to Texas from Silicon Valley

Updated: Dec 12, 2020 / 08:05 AM CST

FILE – This June 26, 2007 file photo shows the exterior of Oracle Corp. headquarters in Redwood City, Calif. Tech giant Oracle Corp. said Friday, Dec. 11, 2020 it will move its headquarters from Silicon Valley to Austin, Texas, and let many employees choose their office locations and decide whether to work from home. (AP Photo/Paul Sakuma, File)

REDWOOD CITY, Calif. (Reuters) — Business software maker Oracle Corp said on Friday it was moving its corporate headquarters to Austin, Texas from Redwood City, California.

Oracle is the latest tech firm to exit Silicon Valley after the COVID-19 pandemic triggered a broader shift to remote work, making companies reconsider California’s higher operational costs and hefty taxes.

Employees can pick their office location and choose whether to work from home part-time or full-time, Oracle said in a regulatory filing.

“We believe these moves best position Oracle for growth and provide our personnel with more flexibility about where and how they work,” the 43-year-old company said.

In 2018, Oracle set up a campus in Austin that could support a 10,000-strong workforce, in a bid to meet increasing demand for its cloud business.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise, a spinoff of the decades-old corporation often mentioned in the accounts of the founding of Silicon Valley, said earlier this month it would move its headquarters from California to the Lone Star State.

Data analytics firm Palantir Technologies also shifted headquarters to Denver, Colorado from Palo Alto, California in August.

Earlier this week, electric car-maker Tesla Inc’s Elon Musk said he had relocated to Texas from California, which has the highest personal income tax rate in the United States.