AUSTIN, Texas (KXAN) — Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced Thursday he’s moving the headquarters of his electric car brand from Palo Alto, California to Austin.
Musk said, “I’m excited to announce we are moving our headquarters to Austin, Texas,” during an annual meeting with stockholders.
This comes after Tesla announced last summer Travis County would be the site of its new gigafactory. Just this month, the automaker ramped up hiring for the factory, posting hundreds of new available jobs.
“Our factory is five minutes from the airport, 15 minutes from downtown, and we’re going to create an ecological paradise, because we’re right on the Colorado River. It’s going to be great,” Musk said to stockholders Thursday.
Musk continued on to say they will still be expanding activities in California, but they want to do that in Texas, too.
“This isn’t a matter of Tesla leaving California, our intention is to actually increase output,” he explained.
Tesla follows other large California companies like Oracle looking to plant roots in Texas. Oracle announced in December 2020 it was moving its corporate headquarters from California to Austin. Samsung is also weighing the city of Taylor as a potential location for its new $17 billion semiconductor plant.
The upcoming move of Tesla’s headquarters comes after Musk’s own personal move to Texas, which he confirmed last year.