Elon Musk is the largest employer in Austin.
Tesla expanded its headcount in the city by 86% last year, bringing the total number of workers to 22,277. That puts it ahead of grocery chain H-E-B, which was the former leader, according to the Dallas Morning News.
Austin is the manufacturing site of Tesla’s Model Y SUVs as well as the Cybertruck. But that’s hardly the billionaire’s only presence in the city and state. The Neuralink brain implant firm has 300 workers in Austin. And SpaceX has a massive presence in Texas, with a factory outside Austin and a launch site along the Gulf Coast.
Musk, who moved to Texas in 2020 after growing frustrated with California during the pandemic, is so enamored with the Lone Star State that he’s in the process of building his own town, which would become a de facto suburb of Austin. Musk has reportedly bought thousands of acres of land about 35 miles outside the city, adjacent to the Boring and SpaceX facilities under construction in the area.
The proposed municipality is said to already include some modular homes. Signs hang from poles reading “welcome, snailbrook, tx, est. 2021.”
Over the past three years, entities tied to Musk have bought at least 3,500 acres in the general Austin area. The Wall Street Journal says some reports indicate Musk controls as much as 6,000 acres.
Musk’s anchor to the area, though, is the gigafactory manufacturing facility in Austin. The facility covers 2,500 acres along the Colorado River with over 10 million square feet of factory floor. That makes it the second-largest building in the world.
Musk isn’t likely to lose the top employer crown for a while. Tesla continues to hire workers in the area, as are many of his other holdings.