Uber made big headlines Tuesday after announcing it was opening a "second" headquarters in Dallas, which will be home to 3,000 employees. Dallas media seized on the story, with some suggesting Uber was moving its headquarters there. But the company says it has no plans to do that.
It is a big move, however, to the notoriously pro-business environs of Texas, where the company is investing $75 million in this move. And no doubt the $36 million in government incentives and various other tax savings were a major factor in deciding on Dallas. Given Uber's recently dismal financials, could an exodus from the Bay Area be far behind?
The Dallas Business Times notes that Uber is moving several big departments to Dallas, including recruiting, human resources, finance, legal and business development teams, as well as the entire Uber Eats team.
And the SF Business Times follows that up with the comparison with medical industry giant McKesson, the nation's sixth largest company, which first announced a big corporate expansion to the Dallas area in late 2016. It was only a matter of a month before McKesson announced that, in fact, it was moving its corporate headquarters from the Bay Area to Dallas.
In a statement to the Business Times, Uber spokesperson Nick Smith says, "I wanted to clarify that we are expanding our presence in Dallas as you noted in your story, but we are not moving our corporate headquarters there, and we don't have plans to."
Uber currently has 5,500 employees in and around San Francisco, with some of those presumably belonging to the teams mentioned above, like Uber Eats. The company currently has a hiring freeze for managers and software engineers, and recently had to cut its $200,000-per-year balloon budget to celebrate "Uberversaries." The company's second-quarter earnings report showed a $5.2 billion loss, the company's biggest quarterly loss to date.
As of now, Uber is planning to occupy 500,000 square feet of new office space at the Chase Center beginning next year. The company is currently SF's second-biggest office tenant, behind Salesforce, with 1.7 million square feet leased, and this is in a city with some of the country's highest office rents.