San Francisco’s chief economist Ted Egan reacts to Musk’s move to move X out of the city by saying that after Musk’s deep staff cuts, X didn’t offer much to the city anyway.

According to Mayor London Breed’s office, after 18 long years, Elon Musk will move X (formerly Twitter), out of San Francisco. The social media company has a long and glorious history with the city, but the billionaire tech magnate, who acquired the platform in 2022, has frequently used it to bash the city’s progressive politics and homelessness crisis.

The social media network’s exit will mark the end of an era for San Francisco’s downtown Mid-Market neighborhood, where city officials once wooed tech companies with incentives labelled the “Twitter tax break.” Musk made substantial cuts to Twitter’s workforce when he bought the company in October 2022, and today X only has about 120 employees left in San Francisco, disclosed a person familiar with the company’s plans, speaking on the condition of anonymity. The employees will be transferred to office space in San Jose and Palo Alto, where Musk’s AI start-up, xAI, operates from, the person divulged. The company will carry out a survey to figure out where individual employees want to work.

Ted Egan said that while Twitter and its workforce were once a significant driver of foot traffic in the Mid-Market neighborhood, X never ever served the same role. Egan attributes that to the work-from-home policies of the pandemic and Musk’s big layoffs. “You never like to see a company move out of town, but it’s a much smaller company now, its future is uncertain and sometimes you have to look forward,” he stated.

Musk informed in a post on X on Monday that he had “no choice” but to exit San Francisco, appearing to hold the city’s business taxes liable. But earlier this month, he said he would move the company’s headquarters to Austin, citing a new Golden State law intended to protect LGBTQ+ children as the “final straw.” The NYT first reported that X would be exiting San Francisco. Musk and X did not reply to a request for comment.

The billionaire has had a tense relationship with San Francisco since he took over the social media company, and he had already got rid of much of his office space in the city. X has been taken to court for failing to pay millions in rent and investigated for unlawfully converting offices into bunk rooms after Musk divulged he was sleeping on a couch on the seventh floor. Last summer, construction crews had to disassemble a giant, illuminated “X” sign above the building when several residents of nearby buildings complained of the blinding, flashing strobe light.