X Social Media Company Plans to Close San Francisco Office

The San Francisco office of the social media company X is set to close in the coming weeks, as announced in an internal email sent out by CEO Linda Yaccarino today. Yaccarino emphasized that this decision, though impactful, is necessary for the long-term success of the company.

According to The New York Times, employees based in San Francisco will be relocated to different locations in the Bay Area, including the existing office in San Jose and a new shared space in Palo Alto focused on engineering collaborations with xAI, Elon Musk’s AI startup.

The move comes on the heels of Musk’s announcement to relocate X and SpaceX headquarters to Texas, with X specifically moving to Austin, as reported by Bloomberg. Musk cited both ideological and practical reasons for the move, expressing frustrations with California laws and conditions.

It is a significant turnaround from Musk’s previous declaration that X would remain headquartered in San Francisco, showcasing the evolving landscape of tech companies in major cities. This decision marks the end of an era for X, originally known as Twitter, and for the Mid-Market neighborhood that became a hub for tech giants like Twitter, Uber, Spotify, and Square.

Twitter’s early presence in the SoMa neighborhood of San Francisco, driven by tax incentives, transformed the area into a tech hotspot adjacent to visible urban challenges. The juxtaposition of tech prosperity and societal issues has been a defining characteristic of the Mid-Market neighborhood over the past decade.