NEDERLAND — The Colorado Chamber of Commerce and its Foundation (CCF) released their 2025 Relocation Tracker, a data assessment with extensive research, which indicated a disturbing trend in the state’s “competitive landscape.”

A reported 98 companies relocated their business operations outside of Colorado between 2019 and 2025—54.5% of them separated entirely from the state—resulting in a loss of over 13,500 jobs. 

In the span of six years, Texas has poached 21 companies from Colorado. California, North Carolina, and Arizona have also taken a collected 22 companies from the state, with the CCF’s previous 2022 and 2024 studies pointing to “state-level policies” and “key business metrics,” such as the costs of living and of doing business, as the main contributing factors for the increased migration. 

The 2025 assessment focused on companies that had “fully relocated, significantly reduced operations, or otherwise chosen another state to invest or expand outside of Colorado,” and utilized data from “official news sources, quarterly financial statement filings with the U.S. Secretary and Exchange Commission, corporate press releases, and Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act notices filed with the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment.”

Some of the companies listed include TIAA, TAG Restaurant Group, Chord Energy Corporation, Sun Theory, TTEC Holdings, Chevron, Delta Millworks, Sitio Royalties Corporation, and Wright One—but those are just the companies who left for Texas in the last three years. 

Some of the companies who moved to other states over the last six years include Arturo, Meyer Burger, Koelbel and Co, One TouchPoint, Clayton Homes, Microvast, Orion Edge, Summit Materials, V2X, Sinton Dairy Foods Company, Spruce Power, Veralto Corporation, Techstars, Paragon 28, Fermented Food Holdings, Heartland Financial, QuietKat, LogRhythm, and Ampirus Technologies.  

Boulder alone has lost AGC Biologics, Inscripta, Pfizer, Plexus, Niner Bikes, Sunflower Bank, and United Sports Brands. 

As for the job numbers, retirement company TIAA’s departure resulted in a loss of 1,000 jobs. So did the cloud-based communications company Bandwidth’s departure to North Carolina. Jet manufacturer Boom Supersonic also chose to expand outside of Colorado to North Carolina, resulting in a loss of 2,400 jobs. 

TIAA moved from Denver for someplace “more modern, collaborative, and energizing,” citing issues with construction and the overall environment of the 16th Street Mall. 

Colorado lost Bandwidth’s 40-acre, $100 million expansion when the company accepted an incentive from North Carolina that promised $32 million in grant money in return for the company creating 1,100 jobs—a goal the company ultimately failed to meet. 

Boom Supersonic also moved to North Carolina on a promise to create jobs. Boom received $107 million from the North Carolina General Assembly for the construction and associated public works of the startup’s factory and airport, under the stipulation that they would create 1,761 jobs. Boom has also not met their goal. 

In Boulder specifically, the COO of United Bikes (which owns Niner) stated the move was for the company’s “long-term sustainability.” Sunflower Bank moved its headquarters to Dallas and brokered a $286 million merger with Seattle-based HomeStreet Bank. Pfizer chose to “externalize” their research operations out of Boulder in an effort to consolidate. 

Palantir Technologies relocated to Florida this year and therefore was not listed in CCF’s 2025 assessment, but the move made national news due to the controversial nature of the AI company’s business with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a contract that resulted in Palantir’s Denver offices seeing increased protests.  

The public scrutiny, as well as an incident of vandalism that struck their Cherry Creek office in November of 2025, were just two of the reasons Palantir listed as responsible for their initiative in moving to Miami. Senate Bill 24-205 was also listed as a major impediment to continuing to do business in Colorado, as it introduced tougher regulations on AI systems. 

A survey conducted by the Colorado Chamber of Commerce in 2022 highlighted that excessive regulations and workforce availability were the top two concerns of over 150 business owners. A 2024 Regulatory Impact Analysis Report indicated that Colorado was the sixth most regulated state in the country, as it utilizes over 205,000 regulations on businesses. 

SB 24-205, the Consumer Protections for Artificial Intelligence Bill, mandates that developers of “high-risk” AI systems must “use reasonable care to protect consumers from any known or reasonably foreseeable risks of algorithmic discrimination in the high risk system.” 

“Algorithmic discrimination” refers to an AI system producing biased outcomes, whether based on skewed training data or flawed design. The bill would have required Palantir to “make available” public statements about the specifics of their high-risk systems in development, as well as documentation necessary for an Impact Assessment. 

Palantir would also be required to disclose to the attorney general any risks of algorithmic discrimination within 90 days of discovering such discrimination having been committed by the AI system. 

Elon Musk’s xAI—handlers for the generative AI “Grok”—filed a lawsuit against Colorado on Thursday, April 9, alleging SB 24-205 will impose “onerous” requirements that will “impermissibly burden” the company’s constitutional rights when it takes effect June 30 of this year.  

Colorado is certainly not alone in drafting and implementing AI legislation. According to Multistate.ai, a resource for tracking federal, state, and local AI-related legislation, the number of such bills being introduced rose from just 200 in some states in 2023, to 1,200 bills across all 50 states in 2025.

1,561 bills have been introduced or will go into effect by March, 2026, including some on data transparency and safety protocols beginning on January 1 in California. There are also bills preventing algorithmic discrimination that went into effect at the top of the year in Texas and a bill regulating AI use in employment decisions in Illinois. 

In addition to regulating AI as a logistical problem, there is also the growing infrastructure problem, which presents large environmental impacts fueling scrutiny from state officials. Most recently, Maine made national news for introducing a statewide moratorium on any new data centers larger than 20 megawatts until November of 2027.  

As for what is being done about Colorado’s big business and tech exodus, a letter signed by 230 company owners was released to state leaders on Monday, April 13, urging nine actions. They include streamlined permitting, positive public engagement and education, more tax incentives, support for public-private partnerships, and better workforce development. 

The Colorado Chamber of Commerce has been actively pushing legislation to tackle many of these nine actions in Senate Bill 137, which promotes regulatory reform through “assessing whether rules are outdated, duplicative, cost-effective, and overly burdensome.” 

SB 137 passed by a unanimous vote of 35 - 0 in the Colorado Senate on April 13, the same day the letter by company owners was released.