Oracle Moves Headquarters to Texas

Oracle was founded in Santa Clara, Calif., in 1977, and most recently it had its headquarters up the road in Redwood City.

The company and its founder and chairman, Larry Ellison, are pillars of the Bay Area. Oracle’s name adorns the stadium home of the San Francisco Giants baseball team. Mr. Ellison is known for his lavish homes in the region.

Oracle joins others in leaving the region that for decades has been synonymous with America’s tech industry. Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. HPE -1.07% earlier this month said it was moving its headquarters to the Houston area.

Palantir Technologies Inc., PLTR 0.59% founded in the Bay Area in 2003, moved its headquarters to Denver this year. Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale, a venture capitalist, moved to Austin this year.

Many of the executives that are turning their back on Silicon Valley share conservative political views and, at times, have taken issue with what they regard as the region’s liberal politics. Two prominent conservative venture capitalists, Peter Thiel and Keith Rabois, have cited what they see as Silicon Valley’s political leanings as reasons to relocate

Mr. Ellison earlier this year threw a fundraiser at his house for President Trump, and Oracle Chief Executive Safra Catz worked on the executive committee for the Trump transition team in 2016.

Greg Abbott, Texas’s Republican governor, cheered the Oracle news, tweeting: “Texas is truly the land of business, jobs, and opportunity.” The state doesn’t collect state income or capital-gains tax for individuals.

This week Tesla Inc. Chief Executive Elon Musk said he had moved himself to Texas. The electric-car maker is building a new plant in Austin and Mr. Musk’s rocket company, Space Exploration Technologies Corp., or SpaceX, has operations in South Texas. Mr. Ellison sits on Tesla’s board.

Oracle already has a presence in Austin. In 2015, the company announced plans to build a new corporate campus in the city. It also bought Austin-based software company StackEngine Inc. in 2015. The Austin campus opened in 2018 and features apartments and restaurants on site.

Since its founding, Oracle grew into one of the biggest software providers. But the company was slow to adapt to the emerging field of cloud computing that has lifted the fortunes of rivals such as Microsoft Corp. and Amazon.com Inc.

Oracle has now pivoted to pursue cloud growth, but without the kind of top-line gains some competitors have seen. Oracle on Thursday posted a 2% quarterly sales increase from a year earlier. On a call with analysts, Mr. Ellison blamed constrained capacity within its cloud infrastructure for not growing more quickly.

The company declined to comment on its relocation beyond its statement or say whether Mr. Ellison himself was moving. .

“Many of our employees can choose their office location as well as continue to work from home part time or all of the time,” the company said. ”We will continue to support major hubs for Oracle around the world, including those in the United States such as Redwood City, Austin, Santa Monica, Seattle, Denver, Orlando and Burlington, among others, and we expect to add other locations over time.”

Write to Aaron Tilley at [email protected]