Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced that his firm will take over the former headquarters of Hewlett-Packard in Palo Alto, California to serve as Tesla’s global engineering headquarters. California Governor Gavin Newsom joined Musk in making the announcement in front of the 521,754-square-foot office property last week. “This is a poetic transition from the company that founded Silicon Valley to Tesla,” Musk said. After the announcement, about 700 job openings for engineers were posted by the company. Tesla already has an office presence at the same location, where the company leased 325,000 square feet in October 2021, the same month Musk announced the firm’s headquarters relocation to Texas.
It’s an interesting move, coming less than 18 months after Musk grabbed headlines by deciding to move Tesla’s HQ to Austin, Texas, citing a number of factors as reasons for the relocation, including disagreements with elected officials over COVID-related shutdowns and a lack of affordable housing. Tesla’s CEO was one of the first to push back against the trend of hybrid and remote work last June, when Musk mandated workers be back in the office 40 hours a week or risk losing their jobs. That’s also been the case for employees at Twitter, which he bought for $44 billion last fall. Since the purchase, Musk has implemented several rounds of layoffs and has found himself at odds with San Francisco’s building department over beds in conference rooms. Last month, Twitter was sued by the landlord of its headquarters building, Columbia Property Trust, over unpaid rent.
