Oracle joins exodus from Silicon Valley

Oracle is set to move its company headquarters from Redwood City, California to Austin, Texas, according to a report from Bloomberg.

The news comes after another erstwhile Silicon Valley stalwart, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) announced that it too would be building and moving to a huge campus in Houston. That company already has locations in Austin and Plano, near Dallas.

Oracle said in a regulatory filing that the move from Redwood City to Austin “means that 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 will, however, maintain its former headquarters.

"We believe these moves best position Oracle for growth and provide our personnel with more flexibility about where and how they work," the company said in the filing.

The coronavirus pandemic has prompted Oracle to offer employees flexible working arrangements and remote working.

The Bloomberg report said that the company has been in the process of moving away resources from California since 2018. That year saw the opening of its Austin, Texas campus that featured employee apartments.

Texas governor Greg Abbott welcomed the company in a tweet. “Texas is truly the land of business, jobs, and opportunity. We will continue to attract the very best,” he said.

Oracle is not the only company to be moving to the Lone Star state. Tesla founder Elon Musk is also moving to the state to concentrate on major projects his company is involved with, such as SpaceX. Texas also has a lower cost of living and no state income tax.