Oracle flees California for Texas, Founder Larry Ellison Heads To Hawaii
California’s business climate crisis leads to a tech exodus to “Silicon Hills.”
Last year, I reported that the tech giant Oracle moved its important annual conference from San Francisco to Las Vegas, citing dirty streets and high hotel costs.
The streets have certainly not gotten cleaner, nor the costs less. Add the state’s pandemic business shutdowns into the equation, and it is little wonder that the California cash cows are seeking greener pastures.
Now, Oracle founder Larry Ellison has announced that he is moving his permanent residence to his Hawaiian island, leaving California after relocating the firm’s headquarters from Silicon Valley to Austin, Texas.
Ellison, 76, who Bloomberg lists as the 11th richest person in the world, told employees on Monday that he will work via Zoom from Lanai, Hawaii’s sixth largest island.
The billionaire, who has a net worth of about $75 billion, owns 98 percent of Lanai and employs the majority of its residents in his resorts and stores after purchasing his majority stake for $300million in 2012.
On Friday, Oracle Corp., where Ellison was CEO for nearly 40 years, said it will move its headquarters from California to Austin, letting employees choose their office locations and decide on whether they want to work from home.
Ellison is not only going to take advantage of his great wealth but this era’s mode of working from remote locations via Zoom.
“I’ve received a number of inquiries about whether or not I will be moving to Texas,” Ellison wrote in a memo to Oracle’s employees. “The answer is no. I’ve moved to the State of Hawaii and I’ll be using the power of Zoom to work from the island of Lanai. Mahalo, Larry.”
This announcement comes on the heels of innovator Elon Musk moving his companies to Texas, citing the business climate crisis that is occurring in the state.
Elon Musk has moved to Texas to focus on two big priorities for his companies: SpaceX’s new Starship spacecraft and Tesla Inc.’s new Gigafactory, currently under construction in Austin.
There also are potentially enormous tax implications for Musk, who recently became the world’s second-wealthiest person. Texas has no personal income tax, while California imposes some of the highest personal income levies in the nation on its richest residents.
“I have moved to Texas,” Musk said Tuesday, speaking in an interview with the Wall Street Journal. Musk did not specify where or say whether he has bought a home.
Musk, 49, has lived in the Los Angeles area for two decades. He’s the chief executive of SpaceX, based in nearby Hawthorne, and of Tesla, which is based in Palo Alto and has its main factory across San Francisco Bay in Fremont.
Musk criticized California in the interview, saying the state had become complacent with its status as an economic giant and less attractive to him.
“If a team has been winning for too long they do tend to get a little complacent, a little entitled, and then they don’t win the championship anymore,” he said. “California’s been winning for a long time. And I think they’re taking them for granted a little bit.”
It appears that the tech exodus is just getting started.
The tech hub, nicknamed “Silicon Hills,” is already home to industry leaders including Advanced Micro Devices, Dell and others.
As of November, 39 companies — in tech and other industries had relocated to Austin so far this year, according to data from the Austin Chamber of Commerce. Among those are 8VC, the venture capital firm run by Palantir co-founder Joe Londonsdale. Tesla is also building a 4 million square foot facility just outside Austin that’s expected to create 5,000 jobs, the Chamber’s records show.
And though it’s not a tech firm, e-cigarette maker Juul Labs moved its corporate office from the Bay Area to Austin last year.
“We talk about ourselves as the Human Capital,” said Laura Huffman, president and CEO of the Austin Chamber, citing the diverse and highly educated population of the region as one reason companies seek to relocate there. She noted that 47% of the city’s working population has a bachelor’s degree, thanks to the 25 colleges and universities in the area.
“I also would not underestimate the importance of quality of life,” Huffman said. “There are a lot of things about this community — it’s got a great local flavor, a great music scene, it’s an outdoors city. That’s where people want to be. I think 2020 has taught us all that we have more choice when it comes to where we live.”
I suspect that Ellison will be joined by other Californians who will relocate soon…though not to their own islands.
yea, I'm debating moving my single wide to another park as well.
— Terry (Ret.) (@editor_wp) December 16, 2020
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Comments
Unfortunately many of the transplants won’t vote any differently in Texas than they did in Califirnia. The problem is they could turn Texas blue. And California won’t turn red. It will remain blue for the foreseeable future.
Hopefully, the hard core Dem voting employees who would rather stay in California either quit or are permitted to work from home, while remaining in California.
This writ larger is exactly how Texas will turn blue.
Pray for Texas.
Took the words right out of my mouth. TX will be purple, then blue because the transplants from CA won’t understand that Texas is desirable for all the reasons that CA is not.
It’s modern day carpetbagging and boy do these transplants arrive in most arrogant fashion possible. They act like they are some kind of Jesus just for being from a blue state and should start running everything in the state immediately. Most have zero self-awareness and boat loads of ego.
The influx of Californians destroyed everything that made Austin a great medium-size college town.
Isn’t this Crooked firm in Texas?
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Gateway pundit
Dominion is tied to Solarwinds isn’t it?
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Yes.
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I bet there’s a heck of a lot of voter fraud keeping CA blue.
Taxpayers (both individual and business)with their feet. They move to lower tax states. Texas, and a few other states, are winning the race against high-tax states. They are growing their economy and adding jobs. States Like NY, IL and CA are stuck in old view of tax and regulation that was formed when people and businesses were less mobile.
Problem many Texans see is the majority of these people moving with their company, or even those who independently decided to leave the problems behind, may/will not change their voting habits. For the local elections in Moscow on the Colorado (aka Austin) that’s no change from the current situation, but for state-wide elections this more likely than not has the potential to be a huge problem (obviously depending on the number of refugees from Blue states who move/are moved here).
Estimates are up to 100,000 people permanently moved from New Orleans to Houston after Katrina, permanently turning that county deep blue, not to mention 100,000 votes for statewide races that are almost 100 Democrat.
Taxpayers *vote* with their feet.
Just as those who have in New York. It has been mostly in Up State NY, but outward migration is now coming from within NY City. And yet, Cuomo and De Blasio still continue to go down the same garden path complaining and pointing fingers while they continue to enact and support the crap which got this state in this dilemma. $’s leaving now are derived from the biggest tax payers and why their complaints about the Fed’s not bailing them out is getting louder.
Their answer to the problem, higher taxes not smarter administration. And with that mind set, the cycle continues to drive even more residents out of state. Up Stater’s going to Tenn., Carolinas, GA., Ala. and Fla.
So do parasites. Are you incapable of seeing this?
Elon Musk also inadvertently dropped some reality on the “green economy” utopia: Transforming all vehicles on the road to electric will require twice as much electricity production capacity. I’m sure he understood the implications since he’s a climate change nut but maybe he did.
Warden Hair Gel’s plan for turning the CA economy 100% green in less than two decades is nothing more than a political mandate. He is outlawing non-renewable energy without any consideration to the science, just as with Wuhan flu lockdowns. This has slashed CA electricity production capacity by 25% which renewables are not even close to replacing even while cheating with all of those natgas power production plants required to make the wind and solar projects work. That might also be part of what Oracle’s Ellison meant describing CA to be an economic train wreck.
CA as committed economic suicide. TX is next.
Elon Musk also builds batteries and batteries are what’s needed to smooth the ‘renewable’ electric power. Too expensive to be practical, but socialist always follow down the wrong trail.
I don’t see the current Tesla car, big battery on wheels, as the model for the future. But I do see their batteries becoming the major factor when solar cells become super efficient. Tesla is looking like the future leader for battery technology.
I believe the big impact will be when electricity can be stored at home in powerful batteries. I just don’t see wind turbines ever being a major source of electricity nor do I see solar being a major electricity producer for utilities who rely on long-distance transmission. We really need to start shrinking the electric utility companies. Solar can work very well locally (like at home) but not if we are enslaved to the big companies. The same problem that Tesla faced 100 years ago.
So good idea for living out of the Grid?
Kind of a mid-stage strategy. Those batteries and solar cells don’t last forever. I still like the idea of building a home largely underground with passive solar hear and a good franklin stove.
I didn’t completely understand your comment. My better answer is yes, off of the utility grid but feeding your excess production into the local grid. If you leave home for a period, your house would still be producing electricity into your storage but excess could be fed into the local grid for your neighbors.
That is what I was thinking.
That ancient tech could take care of heating and cooling – such as abode abodes…..
Just don’t locate to a humid climate for that though.
That would leave only electric needed for appliances then.
There goes the (Texas) neighborhood.
Battery manufacture AND then their disposal are just about the most pollution producing activities in the universe.
The employees will most likely fit right in Austin, Texas ground-zero for LibTardism. If this trend continues Texas will eventually go Blue.
For some reason conservatives seem to regard this as a good thing. I hope you’re prepared for Texas to go the way of Virginia. Liberalism is a religion. The people fleeing California for Texas aren’t going to “see the light” and become conservatives. They’re going to bring their religion with them and spend the rest of their lives trying to turn Texas into exactly what they fled from. The process has already begun and it’s not going to be too many years before it is complete…maybe another decade based on my experience with Virginia.
What are the chances of a Republican ever winning the presidency again if Texas’ electoral votes are added to the category of reliably blue…even if we can successfully tamp down on the rampant cheating?
At some point Texas should start ‘discouraging’ Cali companies from migrating to Texas. For example, by looking at company policies and rejecting corporations that promote woke discrimination and Critical Race Theory. Or something like that.
You’re exactly right. Californians started to escape the then-craziness of that state back in the late 1970s and moved to (principally western) Oregon. That, of course, eventually attracted the hipster “creative” class, thereby turning a pleasant bi-partisan state into a leftist hell-hole.
Fortunately, most of eastern and southern Oregon has avoided that onslaught locally, with the exception of Deschutes and Hood River counties. Unfortunately, we’re still governed by the self-appointed elite and credentialed class of northwest Oregon.
And the never-ending destruction of everything that once made Austin such a cool town continues.
Point of order: Larry bought his island 6-7 years ago.
The transplants have been getting a crash course in the result of “woke” in the last year…. which may explain why Texas wasn’t close enough to steal.
“Locusts flee California for Texas; California’s crop destruction crisis leads to an exodus for hungry vermin.”
FIFY.
If only we could force Ellison to stay and reap the fruits of his political preferences.
NOOOOO! Please, do us a favor and stay FAR AWAY from us! We don’t need no stinkin’ liberals! (Pardon my grammar; plagiarizing a quote to fit the subject seems the best response here.)
Austin compares to Louisville, KY, and Frankfort, KY. There are liberal cesspools in an otherwise conservative state.