Elon Musk may be expanding his business interests in Texas.
Tesla’s well-publicized decision to move Tesla out of California and into Austin has some analysts believing that he will eventually move Twitter out of Silicon Valley and into the Lone Star State.
Since Musk made Texas his residence in 2020, naturally, he has ramped up his business activity in the state. He has several offices and operational centers in the Austin area, according to Texas Public Radio.
Tesla is now headquartered in Del Valle, just outside of Austin. Neuralink, The Boring Company, and SpaceX also have sizable presences in Central and South Texas.
In total, these companies make up Musk’s new Texas Empire, but there is still one piece missing.
Musk is adding plenty of new jobs to the Texas economy, as the Austin-American Statesman recently noted.
Tesla expects to have 10,000 workers at its Austin location by the end of this year. Of course, Musk’s preference for workers to be in the state and on-site for work is impacting an already chaotic housing market in Austin.
“What Tesla is doing primarily on that side is manufacturing, so that’s a lot of in-person building of cars, and those workers are primarily on-site,” the Austin American-Statesman observed. “There are the software and other various tech workers that build Tesla software that they also are on site now in Austin and other locations. The Boring Company — tunneling is very much an in-person job on many levels.”
In a meeting with Twitter employees, Musk was asked if he would move Twitter to Texas. Although he stated that he “does not intend” to move Twitter’s headquarters to Texas, he did not rule it out.
Part of his hesitancy to move Twitter to Texas was because it would “play into the idea that Twitter has gone from being left-wing to right-wing.” Musk said that is not the case and considers it a “moderate-wing takeover,” according to The Verge.
Notable Wall Street tech analyst Dan Ives of Wedbush Securities said a dual headquarters in Austin and San Francisco is most likely in Twitter’s future.
“Musk spends so much time in Texas this would make a ton of strategic sense, in our opinion,” Ives said.
The Austin American-Statesman also floated the idea that Musk will eventually build a Twitter headquarters in Austin.
Earlier in the year, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott publicly appealed to Musk in a tweet, suggesting Musk move Twitter to join his other companies in Texas.
State Rep. Tan Parker even went as far as to say that Texas would “roll out the red carpet” to move Twitter to the state, according to Fox Business.
“Elon made a tremendous decision, the right choice when he brought Tesla to Texas, when he brought SpaceX to Texas,” Parker told Fox Business. “I think it’s no different in his decision-making here for Twitter, he realizes that Texas is the most business-friendly state in America, that we are open for business.”
