Meta Said to Explore Incorporating in a Different State

The owner of Facebook and Instagram is incorporated in Delaware, but is considering a change. Its corporate headquarters would remain in Silicon Valley, people with knowledge of the matter said.

Meta, the owner of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, is considering changing where it is incorporated from Delaware to another state, two people with knowledge of the matter said.

The company is looking at Texas and a handful of other states, said the people, who were not authorized to speak on the confidential discussions. The process is at an early stage and no decision has been made, they added, and Meta’s corporate headquarters would remain in Menlo Park, Calif.

Meta has been going through a corporate overhaul under Mark Zuckerberg, the company’s founder and chief executive. Mr. Zuckerberg has spent the past two years making work force cuts so that the company will operate more quickly and efficiently. More recently, he has aggressively courted President Trump and policymakers in Washington as they set an agenda for issues such as antitrust and artificial intelligence, which will affect the biggest tech firms.

A spokesman for Meta declined to comment on a potential reincorporation. The Wall Street Journal earlier reported that the company might exit Delaware and reincorporate in Texas or elsewhere.

Since Meta was founded as Facebook in 2004, it has been incorporated in Delaware. Many shareholder lawsuits are filed in Delaware courts, and Meta faces litigation there from a number of cases, including one stemming from a scandal over user privacy involving the voter profiling firm Cambridge Analytica in 2018.

Incorporating in another state that might be more favorable to companies rather than plaintiffs in class action lawsuits could help Meta in future shareholder litigation, the people said.