Palo Alto in the 2020s

The 2020s are still being written, so this page is a record of events rather than a verdict. It covers January 2020 through early November 2026. The decade so far has brought a pandemic, a sharp change in how and where people work, the departure of several well known headquarters, the arrival of a new generation of artificial intelligence companies and a long effort to plan for more homes. It has also finished projects that took decades, from an electric railroad to a freeway bridge for bikes.

The 2020 census counted 68,572 residents. Later estimates disagree on the direction since then: the Census Bureau put the July 1, 2025 population at 67,609, while the California Department of Finance estimated 69,004 for January 1, 2026. This page follows our account of Palo Alto in the 2010s.

The pandemic

In mid-March 2020 Santa Clara County and its neighbors issued shelter-in-place orders. Offices emptied, Stanford moved classes online and downtown went quiet. Some businesses did not return. The two-screen CinéArts at Palo Alto Square closed in March 2020 and never reopened. Facing a budget shortfall, the City Council agreed in May 2020 to cut more than 70 positions, Palo Alto Online reported.

The streets changed shape. In June 2020 the city closed California Avenue to cars so restaurants could serve outdoors. Blocks of University Avenue and Ramona Street followed. In June 2021 the council voted to keep the closures through at least September 30 of that year. Cars returned to University Avenue in October 2021. California Avenue's stretch from El Camino Real to Birch Street stayed car-free and the closure was made permanent in March 2025. On March 10, 2025, the council also voted to keep Ramona Street between University and Hamilton avenues permanently car-free. Our University Avenue history places these changes in the street's longer story.

The pandemic sent historians back to an earlier one. Stanford Magazine and other outlets revisited 1918, when masks were required on campus and flu swept Camp Fremont. Our 1918 flu page covers that story.

Opening the foothills

A long-running debate came to a head in 2020. Foothills Park had been open only to residents and their guests since 1965. In September 2020 the ACLU sued on behalf of the local NAACP chapter. On November 3, 2020, the City Council voted 5 to 2 to end the residents-only rule. The park opened to the general public on December 17, 2020. The city later renamed it Foothills Nature Preserve.

Stanford confronted names from its past the same year. On October 7, 2020, it announced that David Starr Jordan's name would be removed from campus buildings because of his leadership in the eugenics movement. Our David Starr Jordan page explains the review.

Companies leave and arrive

Several large companies with deep Palo Alto roots changed course early in the decade:

• Palantir, founded downtown in 2003, moved its headquarters to Denver in August 2020 and went public on September 30, 2020. In February 2026 it moved its headquarters to the Miami area in Florida. It keeps a Palo Alto office.
• Varian, the research park's first tenant, became part of Siemens Healthineers on April 15, 2021.
• Tesla announced its move to Austin on December 1, 2021. In February 2023 it named 3000 Hanover Street in Palo Alto its global engineering headquarters.
• Xerox PARC was donated by Xerox to SRI International in 2023.
• VMware was acquired by Broadcom on November 22, 2023. Broadcom lists its headquarters on the former VMware campus on Hillview Avenue.

Work itself changed. In the Census Bureau's 2020 to 2024 American Community Survey, 35.4 percent of Palo Alto's working residents worked from home, a figure that includes the peak pandemic years. Office space was slower to refill. Kidder Mathews put Palo Alto's office vacancy at 15.1 percent in the third quarter of 2026.

The AI wave

Artificial intelligence became the dominant story in venture capital. PitchBook data put AI at 65.4 percent of 2025 U.S. venture deal value. Palo Alto drew a share of the new firms. Safe Superintelligence, the lab co-founded by Ilya Sutskever, gives Palo Alto as its home. Others in the city include Hippocratic AI, the video startup Pika on High Street and the robotics company 1X. Elon Musk's xAI, with offices on Page Mill Road, leased about 105,000 square feet at the nearby Page Mill Center complex in 2025, The Real Deal reported. Not every firm stayed: several AI startups that began nearby later moved to San Francisco or other Bay Area cities.

The research park kept changing hands. In 2026 The Real Deal reported that General Motors had signed a letter of intent for about 400,000 square feet at 3411 Hillview Avenue, a campus Broadcom sold in 2025. Our Silicon Valley history places the AI wave in the longer line from radio tubes to chips.

Housing and the state

Housing was the decade's main policy fight. Under state law Palo Alto had to plan for 6,086 new homes in the 2023 to 2031 cycle, its regional housing needs allocation. Without a certified plan a city faces the builder's remedy, which lets developers propose projects with affordable units outside local zoning. Palo Alto Online counted seven such applications by April 2024, including a 17-story, 177-foot tower on California Avenue. The council re-adopted its Housing Element on April 15, 2024. The state Department of Housing and Community Development certified it on August 20, 2024. Our guide to the Housing Element tracks its status. New proposals in 2026 included townhomes on the Country Inn site at 4345 El Camino Real and a six-story apartment building to replace the Coronet Motel.

Stanford's own growth plans returned. In September 2026 it filed a new general use permit application with Santa Clara County proposing worker and student housing alongside academic space. Our page on Stanford and the city explains the process.

Taxes and the ballot

Voters weighed in on city and school finances several times. In November 2022 they approved Measure K, a business tax that applies only to businesses with more than 10,000 square feet, with 67.4 percent. Palo Alto Online reported that it was expected to raise about $9.6 million a year for affordable housing, the rail corridor and public safety. Measure L, which restored transfers from the gas utility to the general fund, passed with 77.9 percent. In June 2026 a school parcel tax renewal, Measure B, won 62.4 percent of the vote and failed to reach the two-thirds it needed. Measure J, a half-cent city sales tax the city links to rebuilding Cubberley, is on the November 3, 2026 ballot. The council adopted a $1.04 billion total budget for fiscal 2027 on June 15, 2026.

Long projects finished

Some projects decades in the making reached the finish line:

• November 20, 2021: The Highway 101 bike and pedestrian bridge at Adobe Creek opened.
• August 11, 2024: Caltrain's electric trains began carrying passengers, ending more than a century of locomotive smoke at El Palo Alto. Service was fully electric from September 21. See our railroad history.
• 2025: The Children's Library reopened on June 24 after a refresh and Boulware Park fully reopened on April 25 after an expansion.
• May 2026: Ground was broken on a new Newell Road bridge over San Francisquito Creek, a step in flood protection after a December 31, 2022 storm sent the creek to its second highest flow on record. See our San Francisquito Creek page.

Other plans slipped. The opening of the Palo Alto History Museum in the restored 1932 clinic building on Homer Avenue was postponed in January 2026 after water leaks, with no new date announced. Our Palo Alto Medical Clinic page covers the building. The city's Palo Alto Link on-demand shuttle ended on October 30, 2026.

2020s timeline so far

For every dated event since 1769, see our Palo Alto timeline.

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