Private rocket company SpaceX has moved its headquarters to Texas from Delaware, its founder, Elon Musk, said Wednesday, weeks after a Delaware judge struck down his pay package at Tesla, another company he owns.
Texas Secretary of State Jane Nelson issued a certificate Wednesday confirming that the state has accepted the company’s request to relocate its headquarters, according to a copy of the document posted on her office’s website. A spokeswoman for Ms. Nelson’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Mr. Musk, a billionaire who lives in Texas and also runs the car company Tesla, has had trouble with Delaware. Last month, a judge struck down the salary package that had helped make him the richest person in the world.
The case was brought by a group of Tesla shareholders who were challenging a stock option package that would have allowed Musk to acquire about 304 million Tesla shares at a pre-agreed price – $23.34 per share – if the company had achieved certain objectives. The judge ultimately ruled that Musk had indeed overseen his compensation plan, valued at more than $50 billion last month, with the help of compliant board members.
During the coronavirus pandemic, Musk moved Tesla’s headquarters from California to Texas, although he She said last year that the automaker would move a component of that operation — its engineering headquarters — to California.
He also said he wants to reincorporate Tesla in Texas from Delaware. But because Tesla, unlike SpaceX, is publicly traded, the move would require shareholder approval.
SpaceX still designs and builds its spacecraft at its headquarters in Hawthorne, California, a city near Los Angeles International Airport.
Musk announced SpaceX’s corporate move to Texas just hours before the company launched a robotic lander that will attempt to carry NASA payloads to the moon. The launch time had been pushed back to early Thursday morning from Wednesday due to a technical problem.