A handful of billionaires and prominent companies have tried to cement a new, less-than-ideal narrative about Delaware: The glory days are over.
“Companies should get the hell out of Delaware,” Elon Musk, who previously had two companies incorporated in the state, wrote on X in 2024.
However, dozens of X posts and interviews disparaging the state over its handling of certain legal cases haven’t moved the needle. In fact, the opposite has happened: The number of companies incorporated in Delaware has increased.
“Amid fears of decline, 2025 was a period of monumental growth for Delaware,” Andrew Verstein, the author of the Corporate Census, wrote in a recent report.
The Corporate Census is a database of nearly all entity formations in the United States, including traditional corporate registrations and alternative options such as LLCs.
Verstein has spent almost two years collecting data on corporations and published an update to his research earlier this month.
Although Delaware has a reputation as a business-friendly state, it faced a storm of bad press in 2024 and 2025 when some companies began to ditch the state for what they considered greener legal pastures. Musk, most prominently, removed Tesla and SpaceX’s corporate registrations from Delaware after a judge voided his multibillion-dollar Tesla pay package.
He and some other prominent CEOs have criticized Delaware’s courts over what they consider subjective rulings. Delaware’s Supreme Court reinstated Musk’s pay package in December, but not before some of Musk’s peers joined his unofficial campaign.
Companies like the VC firm Andreessen Horowitz and the leading crypto-exchange Coinbase followed suit, also citing uncertainty around Delaware’s legal system as a factor in their departures, going so far as to urge others to do the same. The alleged exodus has been dubbed “Dexit,” a play on the words “Delaware” and “exit.”
Despite the departures, Delaware is doing just fine.
“The short answer is that ‘Dexit’ isn’t happening,” Verstein told Business Insider.
The little ‘Dexit’ that didn’t
In his report, Verstein wrote that Delaware’s share of corporate formations increased sharply at the beginning of 2025. Delaware experienced an “absolute increase,” he wrote, meaning the growth was driven by new formations in Delaware rather than a decline in formations in other states.
“Instead, there is a clear increase in Delaware’s relative popularity beginning in 2025, making it a singular leader in a period otherwise lacking corporate growth,” Verstein wrote in the report. “About 30% more Delaware corporations formed in 2025 than in 2024, greatly exceeding the prior trendline. This, while national incorporation levels remained flat.”
At the moment, Verstein said the official cause of the formation boost isn’t clear, but speculated on two theories. For one, Delaware implemented new laws to address some of the complaints from Musk and others. They strengthened corporate management’s authority and altered shareholder rights.
“These laws were intended to restore confidence in Delaware law after several 2024 judicial opinions arguably upset market expectations. Yet the jump in incorporations begins prior to the late February 2025 announcement of SB 21. And it begins substantially after the March 2024 passage of SB 313,” Verstein wrote. “While it is certainly possible that the increase reflects a lagged response to SB 313, or perhaps a preemptive response to the legislative currents that led to SB 21, the timing does not immediately commend itself to that explanation.”
He also pointed toward external factors outside Delaware’s control.
“For example, President Donald J. Trump won the general election on November 5, 2024 and took office on January 20, 2025,” he wrote. “Perhaps Delaware corporations were expected to be especially useful under his administration.”
Verstein said, despite the cause being unclear, “the data are plainly incompatible with the most alarmist theories of Dexit.”
Delaware’s not feeling the heat
For its part, Delaware’s government is unfazed.
“Delaware continues to lead the world as the preeminent home for business,” a spokesperson for Delaware’s Secretary of State, which oversees corporations, said in a statement. “The data speaks for itself — Delaware’s corporate franchise remains strong thanks in large part to the unmatched expertise and efficiency of the Delaware Division of Corporations.”
During a 2024 interview with Business Insider, Secretary of State Charuni Patibanda-Sanchez brushed off concerns that they were struggling due to “political rhetoric.”
“We don’t believe that Delaware’s position as the corporate leader and corporate capital of the world is being threatened in any significant way,” Patibanda-Sanchez said. “We always come under threat, though, because states are always trying to get a piece of the action.”
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