Texas has overtaken California as the state with the most Fortune 500 company headquarters, marking a significant shift in the national corporate landscape. This year’s Fortune 500 list counts 57 top companies based in Texas compared with California’s 56, a reversal from two years ago when the Golden State held the lead.
“Texas is the undisputed headquarters of headquarters,” Governor Greg Abbott said in a news release responding to the ranking. “The world’s leading businesses invest with confidence in Texas because of our welcoming business climate, predictable regulatory environment, and skilled and growing workforce.”
Healthcare giant McKesson, along with Exxon Mobil and Chevron, were the top three Texas-based companies on the list. Tesla, which relocated its headquarters from Palo Alto to Austin in 2021, ranked 43rd. Other major companies that have left California for Texas include Oracle, Charles Schwab, and Chevron.
However, the data tells a more nuanced story. Despite losing the headquarters count, California still dominates on several financial measures: its Fortune 500 companies are the most profitable at $647 billion combined, the most valuable at $20 trillion in market capitalization, and employ more people than any other state with 2.8 million workers, according to Fortune’s analysis.
California is also home to nearly 400 billion-dollar startups — more than any other state, per CB Insights — and attracted nearly two-thirds of U.S. venture capital last year, with San Francisco Bay Area companies such as OpenAI leading investment rounds. The Public Policy Institute of California has noted that while there is an uptick in headquarters leaving the state, the net loss from 2011 to 2021 was only about 2% of approximately 47,000 total headquarters.
Amazon unseated Walmart for the top spot on the Fortune 500 this year, ending the retailer’s 13-year reign. Amazon’s 2025 revenue reached $716.9 billion compared with Walmart’s $713.2 billion. The full list of 500 companies generated $21 trillion in combined revenue and $2.1 trillion in profits last year, employing 30.5 million people worldwide.
