Silicon Valley Exodus: Oracle Moves Headquarters To Texas, Latest To Relocate During COVID-19 Pandemic

REDWOOD CITY (CBS SF) – Longtime Bay Area software giant Oracle announced Friday that it has moved its headquarters to Texas, becoming the latest Silicon Valley firm to relocate during the COVID-19 pandemic.

According to a regulatory filing obtained by Bloomberg, the company based in Redwood City will be headquartered in Austin.

In the filing, the software company said the move "means that many of our employees can choose their office location as well as continue to work from home part time or all of the time." Oracle said it would continue to support other office locations throughout the country, including in California.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott celebrated the move, saying in a tweet that his state "is truly the land of business, jobs and opportunity."

"We will continue to attract the very best," Abbott went on to say.

Oracle joins other Silicon Valley firms that have recently expanded their presence outside of the Bay Area or moved their headquarters entirely. Hewlett Packard Enterprise, once a part of the pioneering Silicon Valley firm, announced last week that it plans to move its headquarters from San Jose to a suburb of Houston in 2022. Apple, headquartered in Cupertino, is currently constructing a $1 billion campus in the Austin area. Over the summer, Palantir, a tech firm with ties to the military and intelligence agencies, moved from Palo Alto to Colorado.

Meanwhile, Elon Musk, CEO of Bay Area-based electric carmaker Tesla, confirmed this week that he has also moved to Texas, as his auto company is building a new factory in Austin. SpaceX, Musk's other major venture, also has operations in the Lone Star State.

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Musk said California has taken innovators for granted and likened the Golden State to an overconfident sports team. "They (successful sports teams) do tend to get a little complacent, a little entitled, and then they don't win the championship anymore," he said. "(California) has been winning for a long time. And I think they're taking them for granted a little bit."

The Bay Area Council expressed concern about the recent moves, saying California can no longer ignore what it described as an "awful" business climate in the state.

"We are watching the unraveling on one of the world's mightiest economies and the consequences will be devastating," Jim Wunderman, the council's president and CEO, said in a statement. "The COVID pandemic is now exposing California's deep vulnerabilities as employers realize they have other, better choices of where to locate their business. We can't afford to dither any longer or California will permanently lose hundreds of thousands if not millions of jobs to states like Texas that place value on business and investment."

Oracle's ties to the Bay Area go back decades. Co-founded in 1977 by Larry Ellison in Santa Clara as Software Development Laboratories, the company became known as Oracle in 1982 and moved to its landmark towers located in the Redwood Shores area of Redwood City in 1989.

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