Elon Musk built an increasingly large presence in Texas after moving there from California in 2020. Now, after investing heavily in Republican campaigns during the 2026 midterms, his close alignment with the state’s political leadership faces a changed landscape following what the source describes as a “blue wave.”
Musk moved to an area outside Austin after public disputes with California authorities during the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2021, he focused SpaceX’s Starship program on South Texas and encouraged employees to relocate there. That March, he began calling the company’s production and launch facilities near the Rio Grande River Starbase.
SpaceX expanded its Texas footprint in the years that followed. In 2023, Musk built a large factory east of Austin to produce Starlink customer terminals and other electronics. In July 2024, he said SpaceX would move its corporate headquarters from Hawthorne, California, to Starbase, pointing to California’s regulatory and political environment.
The company has continued expanding Starbase and announced this summer that Terafab, described as “the most epic-chip building effort in the world,” would be built in Grimes County. SpaceX said it plans a vertically integrated factory with more than 100 million square feet of manufacturing space.
Musk has frequently praised Texas’s political and regulatory climate and its Republican leaders. In July, Gov. Greg Abbott called him “the leading visionary of our time” while interviewing him as a guest host on The Sean Hannity Show.
Musk then backed Republicans in the 2026 midterms, spending an estimated $474 million through his America PAC and other organizations, according to The New York Times. Nearly half of that sum went to candidates in Texas. The report raises the question of what the state’s political shift could mean for Musk and SpaceX, which have made Texas central to their plans.
Sources: Ars Technica.