Corporate HQs Are Following The Billionaires To South Florida

As the ultra-wealthy descend on Miami’s most expensive homes, the CEOs establishing roots in the region are bringing their companies with them.

In the first two months of 2026, four companies have relocated their headquarters to South Florida. All of the companies' chairmen or chief executives have recently moved to or bought a personal residence in South Florida, according to a Bisnow analysis.

“A lot of this is tied to the residential and to the high net worth [people] that have made purchases in Miami, probably for tax reasons, saying, ‘I want my office here,’” Current Real Estate Advisors co-founder Brandon Charnas said.

More condos sold for more than $20M in 2025 than ever before in South Florida, according to Miami Realtors. Miami led the nation in ultra-luxury sales last year, The New York Times reported, and the pace has only accelerated in 2026. 

Both founders of Google and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg have spent tens of millions on Miami real estate this year. A proposed tax on California billionaires has wealthy residents flocking to the Magic City. 

Beyond the luxury real estate market, the influx of the world's richest people is attracting more investment and talent to South Florida, office brokers and landlords told Bisnow. 

More than 74 companies relocated their headquarters to Florida between 2020 and 2025, more than any other state, according to a September JLL report.

Trinity Investments, a private REIT with a focus in the hospitality sector, moved its headquarters from Hawaii to Miami's Coconut Grove neighborhood in mid-February. Citadel CEO Ken Griffin and Google co-founder Larry Page each spent more than $100M to buy estates in the Grove, as locals call it. 

Trinity’s president, managing partner and CEO, Sean Hehir, moved to the neighborhood in 2023. A year later, the company leased 3K SF in The Canopy office building close to his home.

As his firm's operations ramped up, so did its need for space. So Trinity expanded its lease to 5K SF at the two-story office building.

“It made sense for us to officially make this the headquarters,” Hehir told Bisnow in a Zoom interview.

“It was more, ‘Do I want to keep working out of my apartment? Or should I get an office?’” Hehir added. “When we started looking, I didn't look at offices anywhere other than in Coconut Grove.”

The highest-profile move so far was Palantir Technology, a $362B publicly traded software company that abruptly announced on X last month that it moved its headquarters to Miami.

Palantir is operating out of an Industrious coworking office in Aventura, where it lists its “principal executive offices,” according to a December filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The company’s chairman, Peter Thiel, has owned a mansion in Miami Beach since 2020, Bloomberg reported, and two of his other ventures, San Francisco-based Founders Fund and Thiel Capital, also have Miami offices.

“When one company decides to make a move, others want to come, too. They're curious,” JLL South Florida Brokerage Lead Dan McGowan said. “They're always curious, ‘Why is XYZ coming to Miami or South Florida? Maybe I should look into it, too.’”

“Business brings business,” added McGowan, who is also on the board of the Miami-Dade Beacon Council, the local economic development agency.

Canadian waste management company GFL Environmental in February moved its executive office to Miami Beach after nearly two decades based in Vaughan, Ontario.

Its CEO, billionaire Patrick Dovigi, owns and manages multiple condos and homes in Miami and considers it his family’s primary residence after he moved to the city during the pandemic.

D-Wave, a quantum computing technology company, also announced at the beginning of February that it was moving its headquarters from California to the Boca Raton Innovation Campus. D-Wave President and CEO Alan Baratz is based in North Miami Beach, according to his LinkedIn profile.

A D-Wave representative declined to comment further on its relocation. Palantir and GFL didn't respond to Bisnow's requests for comment.

“The decisions about where to locate your companies is much more of an emotional, personal decision,” Quest Workspaces CEO Laura Kozelouzek said. “Then it's sometimes backed up with all of the economic considerations.”

Florida has always had year-round tropical weather and no personal income tax, which has made it attractive for wealthy migrants. But the state and many of its cities have aggressively courted business from other states in recent years with corporate-friendly policies. Last year, the state eliminated its tax on commercial leases and enacted a law that enforces noncompete agreements, which have come under scrutiny in places like New York and California.

“I think part of it is the economics, but I also think South Florida is establishing the reputation as an easy place to do business,” Kozelouzek said. “So it's the psychological piece of it as well. And it's a tax-friendly environment.”

Griffin shook up Miami's corporate landscape in 2022 when he announced that he was moving the headquarters of his hedge fund, Citadel, from Chicago to Miami. That year, 21% of Miami office leases were signed by companies that didn't previously have a footprint in the city, according to Blanca Commercial Real Estate.

But that initial burst of activity wasn't sustained. By 2025, new market entrants only made up 6% of office leases — in line with pre-pandemic levels, according to Blanca CRE. 

The flow of billionaires never stopped. Miami-native Jeff Bezos moved to Miami in 2023 after spending $147M on two properties on Indian Creek and looking for Amazon offices. Last year, the tech company he founded signed a lease for 50K SF in Wynwood, then quickly added 26K SF more.

But until this year, Amazon was still something of a recent outlier. Then California lawmakers proposed a one-time 5% tax on California residents who make more than $1B to close a roughly $100B federal healthcare funding gap for the state. If the measure passes — it goes before voters in November — the payment would be due during the 2027 tax season.

Since the measure advanced, Miami's real estate market has been dominated by West Coast billionaires. Page, the world’s second-richest person, according to Forbes, spent $173M to purchase two Miami mansions just days into 2026. On March 2, Zuckerberg — No. 5 on the richest person list — purchased a mansion in Indian Creek for $170M. 

Two of the area's leading billionaires, Related Ross CEO Stephen Ross and Griffin, have teamed up to try to convince more of their fellow titans of industry to bring their businesses with them.

They pledged a combined $10M to Ambition Accelerated, a marketing campaign created through The Florida Council of 100 that is centered around luring out-of-state executives with Florida's tax benefits and lighter business regulations.

Ross and Griffin have millions of square feet of office space coming online in the coming years. Related Ross has 1M SF of office under construction in West Palm Beach. Griffin is starting construction this year on a 54-story mixed-use tower in Brickell with 1.3M SF of office, which is set to house both Citadel's headquarters and space offered to other companies.

“They're looking for further investment on their own investments,” Colliers senior associate Zachary Smith said. “They don't want to be the only ones down here, and they're not. They're continuing to push people to come down and invest in the market, because the more of those people that come down, the more growth they're going to see for their own companies and their own businesses.”

The West Coast billionaire pipeline to Miami doesn't appear to be letting up anytime soon. Former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz paid $44M for a penthouse in Surfside, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday. Schultz announced on LinkedIn that he and his wife were moving to Miami after living in Seattle for roughly 47 years.

Their family office is moving with them. 

“It's really just a herd mentality,” Smith said. “I'm not a billionaire, but I would assume if all my billionaire friends were moving to a new shiny place, I would want to have some form of a piece of that.”