Report: 70 Companies Leaving San Francisco (2020-2025)

Once the hub for tech companies in the world, San Francisco is now facing a wave of businesses leaving the Bay Area. An astonishing 35% of San Francisco’s workforce works primarily from home, according to a 2021 NBC Bay Area report. That’s the highest among all US cities where data was collected.

And with workers staying home or moving out of San Francisco altogether, the use of office space has cratered. In the third quarter of 2023, San Francisco’s office space vacancy rate ballooned to 34%, according to CBRE. In 2020, that figure was just 4.1%. As a result, sales tax revenue is 35% below the trend line dating back to 2018, according to Stanford Professor, Nick Bloom. As Bloom puts it, “San Francisco has lost about a third of its economic activity.”

It’s a vicious cycle: The workers don’t want – and don’t need – to be there ➡️ the offices empty out ➡️ the tax revenue for the city craters ➡️ the companies leave San Francisco for good.

Below, you’ll find all of the businesses leaving San Francisco and the Bay Area since 2020. Whenever a company announces its plans to leave the state, we’ll update the list.

• Notable businesses that have left San Francisco
  • Download a sample of the database for free
  • Purchase the full database
• Companies reducing office space in San Francisco (but not moving)
• Retailers closing stores (where to find data)
• Why companies are leaving?
• Where they are going?
• Submit a company

Businesses Leaving San Francisco Since 2020

These businesses used to be headquartered – or have major offices – in the Bay Area, but decided to leave.

Company	Former Headquarters	New Headquarters	Story
Koya Medical	Oakland	Texas	June 10, 2025 "Dallas offers the talent, infrastructure, and healthcare ecosystem we need to continue to innovate and grow."
Simplilearn	San Francisco	Texas	October 23, 2024 "Our move to Texas marks a pivotal moment in our journey, driven by our commitment to being at the forefront of a thriving tech ecosystem and tapping into a diverse talent pool.”
X (Twitter)	San Francisco	Texas	September 13, 2024 "'This is the final straw,' Musk said in announcing that X would move its headquarters to Austin, Texas."
McAfee	San Jose	Texas	January 20, 2023 "The San Jose-based cybersecurity company McAfee announced it’ll be Frisco’s newest addition by making The Star the home of its new regional headquarters in 2023."
Chevron	San Francisco	Texas	June 29, 2022 "Chevron says it's willing to pay its employees who are willing to relocate to Houston. The U.S. oil company is planning to sell its headquarters located at Chevron Park in San Ramon, California, so it can move to a more modern space."
Tesla	San Francisco	Texas	October 7, 2021 “To be clear we will be continuing to expand our activities in California,” Musk said. “Our intention is to increase output from Fremont and Giga Nevada by 50%. If you go to our Fremont factory it’s jammed.” But, he added, “It’s tough for people to afford houses, and people have to come in from far away....There’s a limit to how big you can scale in the Bay Area.”
AECOM	San Francisco	Texas	August 17, 2021 "ECOM, the world’s trusted infrastructure consulting firm, today announced it will relocate its global headquarters from Los Angeles, CA, to Dallas, TX, effective Oct. 1, 2021."
Snowflake	San Mateo	Montana/ Remote	May 26, 2021 “We are a Delaware corporation with a globally distributed workforce and no corporate headquarters. Under the Securities and Exchange Commission’s rules, we are required to designate a ‘principal executive office.’ For purposes of this report, we have designated our office in Bozeman, Montana as our principal executive office, as that is where our Chief Executive Officer and Chief Financial Officer are based.”
Charles Schwab	San Francisco	Texas	January 1, 2021 "The financial services firm announced a $26 billion merger with TD Ameritrade in October 2020. As part of the merger, the combined company’s headquarters would relocate from San Francisco to North Texas (Westlake)."
Oracle	Redwood City	Texas	December 11, 2020 “Oracle is implementing a more flexible employee work location policy and has changed its Corporate Headquarters from Redwood City, California to Austin, Texas. We believe these moves best position Oracle for growth and provide our personnel with more flexibility about where and how they work,” a spokesperson confirmed to CNBC.
CBRE Group	San Francisco	Texas	October 29, 2020 "CBRE Group, the world’s largest commercial real estate services and investment firm, is moving its headquarters from Los Angeles to Dallas."
Palantir	Palo Alto	Colorado	August 19, 2020 "Chief Executive Officer Alex Karp has been open in the past about a potential move. In an interview with Axios on HBO in May, Karp said he was against the “increasing intolerance and monoculture of Silicon Valley” and was nearing a decision on whether or not to move. Karp said at the time Colorado was under consideration."

Sources:

1. News stories linked to from within the table
2. The California Book of Exoduses compiled by California Policy Center
3. Hoover Institution at Stanford

Companies Reducing Office Space In San Francisco (But Not Moving)

These businesses have made public announcements about office downsizes in San Francisco. However, they haven’t necessarily moved office space to a new city or state. For the most part, these downsizes are due to 1) more remote workers or hybrid schedules, or 2) layoffs. 

• Affirm Holdings
• Airbnb
• Airtable
• Alphabet (Google)
• Autodesk
• Block
• Chevron
• Chime
• Citigroup
• Credit Karma
• Dropbox
• Eventbrite
• Intel
• Lyft
• Meta (Facebook)
• Oracle
• PayPal
• Pinterest
• Reddit
• Salesforce
• Slack
• Snap
• Splunk
• Trulia
• Yelp
• Zynga

Read our full report on major companies reducing office space here.

 

Retailers Closing Stores In San Francisco

There are two types of business departures happening in San Francisco:

1. Companies moving their offices out of San Francisco (what we covered in this report)
2. Retail stores closing in San Francisco

We did not include retail closures in the report you read above. However, here are a few notable companies with major store closures in San Francisco since 2020:

• Westfield San Francisco Centre: The largest shopping center in the city stopped making payments on its $558 million loan.
• Nordstrom: San Francisco’s flagship store officially closed after 35 years in business.
• Hilton: Hilton stopped making payments on two marquee hotel properties in 2023.
• Whole Foods: San Francisco’s flagship Whole Foods closed to “ensure the safety” of its employees after just one year open.
• Old Navy: Old Navy shut down in downtown San Francisco in 2022 after two decades in business.

If you’d like to learn about that trend, I recommend reading San Francisco Chronicle’s exodus map, New York Post’s coverage, or CNN’s coverage of Coresight Research’s data.

Why are San Francisco businesses leaving?

I’ve pulled out notable phrases that company leaders mentioned when explaining their decision to leave the San Francisco Bay Area. Here are some quotes from executives at San Francisco companies leaving to give you an idea:

• There is an “increasing intolerance and monoculture of Silicon Valley“
• “We believe San Francisco’s path to recovery remains clouded and elongated by major challenges”
• Employees can be homeowners in Texas, “which in the Bay Area is virtually impossible”
• (The Bay Area) was not sustainable for us…For the same price we can find really amazing people in other areas”
• There were “some symmetries in the way that the Bay Area works that just didn’t really work well for us”
• Seeking “a strong economic climate with low taxes, reasonable regulations and a high-caliber workforce”
• Moving for “our business needs, opportunities for cost savings, and team members”
• Finding a place that is “easier to hire talent“
• Seeking a “more sustainable place to do business“
• “Arizona provided the ideal conditions of being business-friendly, offering a high quality of life at reasonable cost”

See Also: Every Company Leaving California | Notable Companies Leaving Chicago | Every Major Company CEO Stepping Down | California’s 4-Day Work Week Bill

Where are San Francisco businesses going? Half go to Texas.

In my list current list, 70 companies have left San Francisco between 2020 – July 2025. They’ve moved to 18 different states (and some companies have moved to multiple locations). Of those states, here are the biggest beneficiaries: 

• • Texas: 34 (49%)
  • Arizona: 5 (7%)
  • Colorado: 5 (7%)
  • North Carolina: 3 (4%)
  • Tennessee: 3 (4%)
  • Florida: 4 (6%)
  • 15 states: 2 or fewer

Want to download a list of all companies that have left San Francisco?

We keep multiple databases of company movement. Here are some options:

• Companies Leaving San Francisco
• Companies Leaving California
• Companies Moving To Texas
• Companies Reducing Office Space

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