Axon CEO says company will leave Arizona if SB 1543 fails to pass

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. - Rick Smith, the CEO of Scottsdale's Axon says he will leave Arizona if a new bill fails to pass the state legislature.

"I’m being thrown out, and I’m fighting with every ounce of energy I’ve got to keep the company here," said Smith.

What they're saying:

This comes after a residential group named Taxpayers Against Awful Apartment Zoning Exemptions (TAAAZE) successfully stalled the building of the billion-dollar tech company's new global headquarters until residents can vote on it in the 2026 election.

"Scottsdale originally was designed to be a low-scale community," said Bob Littlefield with TAAAZE. "Western-themed, suburban."

Smith says his board won't wait that long to start building. It's why he's pushing for Senate Bill 1543, which would allow Axon to bypass the election by creating a new zoning ordinance.

The ordinance would allow major companies that build corporate headquarters in Arizona to be entitled to build housing for its employees, and that's at the heart of the dispute – the 1,900 new apartments Axon wants to build south of the Loop 101 on Hayden Road.

"Asking me to building a headquarters in the middle of the desert, with nowhere for people to live, is like asking me to build a house with no garage and no kitchen," said Smith.

"It’s not necessary for him to override the will of the Scottsdale voters and to basically put a thumb in their eye, when they have made it clear over the last couple of elections, both by who they elected, and by the referendums, that they don’t want another 2,000 apartments," said Littlefield.

Bob Littlefield

"We just need to get the politicians to start paying attention to the silent majority of people who support economic progress, who realize that high-paying jobs bring taxes that pay for infrastructure for schools and freeways and solve all the problems people worry about," Axon CEO Rick Smith said. "Driving us out of state, because people don’t want – basically what they’re saying is we don’t want more people coming to Arizona. We don’t want these jobs coming here because it’s going to bring more people and those people have to live somewhere.  And I think that’s crazy."

Axon CEO Rick Smith

Axon says the new headquarters would compete with tech campuses like Google and Apple, bringing 5,500 high-paying jobs, and contributing millions to the local economy.

In response, TAAAZE has organized a political action committee to fight the passing of SB 1543. If it fails, Axon says it will move to either Texas or Florida.

"If we leave, we will sell that land, and it will go back to its original zoning, which is industrial, and that will be something most likely a shipping and fulfillment center, with semi trucks trucking deliveries in and out," Smith said. "If that’s what local residents want, if you’d rather have $15 an hour warehouse jobs than $300,000 a year tech jobs – I mean, we got to get the crazy out of politics in Arizona."