X will soon close its longtime San Francisco office and move employees to offices elsewhere in the Bay Area, according to an email from CEO Linda Yaccarino reported by The New York Times. Yaccarino’s note to employees comes several weeks after Elon Musk threatened to move X’s headquarters out of California and into Austin, Texas.
Yaccarino’s note, however, doesn’t seem to mention Texas. According to The New York Times, she told employees the closure will happen over the “next few weeks” and that employees will work out of “a shared engineering space in Palo Alto” that’s also used by xAI, as well as other “locations in San Jose.”
Twitter, and now X, has had a rocky relationship with its home base since Musk’s takeover of the company. Musk banned employees from working remotely shortly after taking over the company in 2022, and ordered many Twitter workers back to the office in the mid-Market neighborhood of San Francisco.
He later ran afoul of the city’s Department of Building Inspection for installing a giant flashing X on top of the building, and for reportedly converting office space into hotel rooms for employees to sleep in. The company’s landlord had also sued X over unpaid rent, The San Francisco Chronicle reported earlier this year. The lawsuit was later dismissed.
Despite Musk’s frequent complaints about San Francisco and its elected leaders, he had previously vowed to keep the company’s headquarters in the city. “Many have offered rich incentives for X (fka Twitter) to move its HQ out of San Francisco,” Musk tweeted last year.
“Moreover, the city is in a doom spiral with one company after another left or leaving. Therefore, they expect X will move too. We will not. You only know who your real friends are when the chips are down. San Francisco, beautiful San Francisco, though others forsake you, we will always be your friend.”
But, even before Musk’s recent posts about moving to Austin, there were other signs X may be getting ready to leave after all. The San Francisco Chronicle reported in July that X’s landlord was looking to sublease much of the company’s 800,000 square-foot headquarters.
X didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/x-is-reportedly-closing-its-san-francisco-office-203650428.html?src=rss