Tesla CEO Elon Musk seems intent on making good on the company’s recent threats to bolt Silicon Valley for the Texas area.
“Frankly, this is the final straw,” Musk recently posted on Twitter. “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."
All the drama comes in the wake of Musk and company having recently been involved in a public spat with local public health officials over coronavirus restrictions, at one point resulting in the Fremont plant being forced to temporarily shut down.
The automaker's annual shareholder meeting recently took place in Texas, as opposed to in Silicon Valley, Musk relocated there and the company chose Austin as the site for its next U.S. manufacturing plant, which is now under construction. Musk recently confirmed plans for the move, adding the company might stop producing cars in California altogether.
Business Insider reports that the team’s two most recent press releases came from Austin rather than Palo Alto.
If Tesla were to formally make the move to Texas, it would instantly become the third-largest publicly traded company in the Austin area based on its 2020 revenue of $12 billion, trailing only Dell Technologies ($92.2 billion) and Austin-based Oracle ($39.1 billion).
With en estimated net worth of $190.5 billion as of early September, Forbes 400 recently crowned Musk, who also leads SpaceX, as the richest person in Texas and the second-richest person in the U.S.