Do as I whine, not as I sign.
Despite Elon Musk’s constant stream of criticism about California’s politics, business climate, and quality of life issues, the billionaire’s companies keep gobbling up new office leases in the Bay Area.
This time, Musk’s brain-implant company Neuralink is going to take an entire research building in South San Francisco. According to real estate sources, the company has agreed to lease a newly-constructed, 144,000-square-foot property at 499 Forbes Blvd.
The deal for the building comes more than a year after the tech mogul abruptly closed X’s former headquarters in San Francisco and relocated most of its workers to the South Bay, where he has been accumulating hundreds of thousands of square feet of office space for xAI and Tesla at Page Mill Road in Palo Alto.
Over the years, Musk — who has closely aligned himself with President Donald Trump and spent the first half of the year leading the Department of Government Efficiency — has said he wants to move his companies to Texas.
But his real estate deals tell a different story.
In 2023, Musk stood side by side with Gavin Newsom (opens in new tab) and announced that Palo Alto would be Tesla’s “Global Engineering and AI HQ.” There, the electronic automobile manufacturer leased 325,000 square feet at an office complex known as Stanford Research Park. The year after, xAI took another 77,000 square feet in the same area, according to a recent SEC filing (opens in new tab).
Neuralink, which is based in Fremont, did not respond to a request for comment. The San Francisco Business Times was the first to report (opens in new tab) on the company’s South San Francisco lease.