These days, business news frequently features a certain type of moment. A company announces that it is relocating its headquarters from California to Texas. It may be a well-known brand or a more subdued mid-size business. It appears that no one is shocked anymore. The way weather reports turn into background noise after a certain amount of repetition has become almost routine.
However, the numbers supporting that practice are substantial. Between 2018 and 2025, 725 companies moved their headquarters, according to CBRE, one of the biggest commercial real estate firms in the nation. Businesses are moving from high-tax, highly regulated states like California to locations with lower costs and laxer regulations, with Texas taking the lion’s share. This pattern is consistent enough to be called a trend rather than a coincidence.
During that seven-year period, Dallas-Fort Worth alone attracted 111 headquarters relocations—more than any other metro area in the nation. 88 was added by Austin. Houston added thirty-one more. When you combine those three cities, the total number is comparable to what entire states are able to draw. It’s difficult to ignore how concentrated this change is; a few of Texas’s cities are doing the majority of the work, rather than the state as a whole.
During that same period, the Bay Area reported a net loss of 163 headquarters. The usual suspects cited by departing executives include high taxes, labor laws, and an ever-increasing cost of living, even as remote work undermines the long-held belief that businesses must be located close to coastal talent clusters. There’s a feeling that for an increasing number of boardrooms, California’s allure—the climate, the universities, the cultural prestige—simply stopped outweighing the financial calculations.
However, Texas has its own issues, so portraying this as a perfect growth story would be incorrect. The state’s lower-cost-of-living pitch, which has long been a component of its sales pitch to relocating businesses, has been undermined by the roughly 25% increase in consumer prices over the past five years. Legal observers have also identified “nuclear verdicts”—lawsuit settlements that frequently surpass $10 million—as an increasing financial burden, subtly raising insurance rates and operating costs for companies that believed they were avoiding California’s regulatory burden only to encounter a different kind of expense.
Florida has been experiencing a similar surge, with Miami attracting businesses from Boston, the Bay Area, and Los Angeles due to its growing tech and finance scene and lower taxes. Even in New York, where there are still more Fortune 100 companies than almost anywhere else, departures are mounting, and notable executives like Ken Griffin of Citadel have been open about their dissatisfaction with the city’s trajectory.
What is emerging appears to be a gradual redrawing of the boundaries of American business, rather than a single dramatic exodus. It is truly unclear if Texas will be able to maintain this advantage once its own expenses and legal demands catch up. It’s possible that every state will eventually have to respond to the same awkward questions California is currently facing, rather than Texas emerging victorious.
