Delaware was once famous for being the state that almost all publicly-traded companies incorporated in. No more.
Andreessen Horowitz, one of the biggest venture capital firms, is moving its corporate home out of once business-friendly Delaware to Nevada. It’s also urging startups and the broader business community to join the exodus. It’s the Delaware version of Britain’s escape from the EU, popularly known as Brexit.
The company explains why in a blog post:
It used to be a no-brainer: start a company, incorporate in Delaware. That is no longer the case due to recent actions by the Court of Chancery, which have injected an unprecedented level of subjectivity into judicial decisions, undermining the court’s reputation for unbiased expertise. This has introduced legal uncertainty into what was widely considered the gold standard of U.S. corporate law.
It started when a Delaware judge barred Elon Musk’s SpaceX compensation package in 2018. A cascade of other disputes have pushed Dropbox, TripAdvisor, Tesla, and Bill Ackman’s Pershing Square Capital Management to flee Delaware.
Nevada is the new hot state for incorporating businesses.