DALLAS, Tex. — The wind is whistling through an enormous, dusty construction site, surrounded by highways, office towers and a sports arena. Inside, hundreds of workers are spending years — and some $700 million — building Goldman Sachs' big bet on the future of Wall Street.
The New York investment bank plans to open this 800,000-square-foot campus in 2028, with space to eventually employ more than 5,000 local workers. The building will supersize Goldman's presence in Dallas, where the company already has its second-largest U.S. office after its global headquarters in Manhattan.
Even half-built, this massive structure has become a visible symbol of the financial industry's recent growth in Texas — and the state's ambitions to steal more business from Wall Street's birthplace in New York. Now local political leaders and the financial executives they've wooed to Dallas are eager to talk up its financial boom — or what they call "Y'all Street."
Goldman is building its new campus in "the beating heart of Y'all Street," says Aasem Khalil, the Goldman Sachs partner who runs its Dallas office. He rattles off the names of Goldman's top U.S. competitors, like JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley — both also headquartered in New York — and points out that they also have or are considering Dallas offices.
A lifelong New Yorker, Khalil moved to Dallas for Goldman a decade ago. Now he's one of the city's biggest public cheerleaders in the U.S. financial industry.
"This is the most welcoming city you'll find anywhere in the country, if not the world," he says. "The culture is amazing, and the business climate far surpassed any expectation that I had, when I came down here as an uninformed New Yorker."
Texas is drawing big companies and wealthy executives
That "business climate" is a big part of Texas' growing appeal for financial companies — and for some of the star bankers they employ.
Wall Street's top banks have long hired workers outside of New York, where they can pay lower wages for "back-office" roles and other less glamorous jobs. (Goldman first opened an office in Dallas in 1968.)
And there are plenty of people to hire: Texas is the fastest-growing state in the nation, with the wealthy suburbs of Dallas and the rest of the booming North Texas region on track to reach 9 million people by next year.
But now Goldman and its rivals are seeing more incentives to hire more senior, high-profile bankers in Dallas: They'll be closer to lucrative potential clients, as more big companies and wealthy individuals move to the Lone Star State.
Today, Texas boasts the most Fortune 500 companies in the nation, more than California or New York. The state has long been known for its big oil companies and other household names, like American Airlines and AT&T. But in recent years, it's won over many other big companies, including Elon Musk's Tesla and SpaceX, Larry Ellison's Oracle, investment firm Charles Schwab and the pharma giant McKesson.
Companies have always liked Texas' lower taxes and lighter regulations. The state has been trying to become even more "business-friendly," with new laws that make it easier for companies to fend off lawsuits and other challenges from their shareholders. The laws have also helped Texas draw some businesses from Delaware, where many companies have their legal headquarters.
Musk, the billionaire CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, is now one of Texas' most prominent converts. Musk moved both of those companies to Texas in recent years, and has loudly criticized both California and Delaware (where a Tesla shareholder sued him over his record-setting compensation).
There's a political component to Texas's pro-business pitch
A former special adviser to President Trump, Musk is also close to Texas' Republican Governor, Greg Abbott, who has long promoted Texas as a "pro-business" refuge from states with more liberal leaders and policies. Now other local politicians are using similar rhetoric.
"We don't vilify corporations down here. We view them as partners, and we view them as job creators that we want to support," says Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson.
Johnson, a onetime Democrat who switched to the Republican party in 2023, explicitly called out California and New York in an interview with NPR. Both states have specific policies and politicians that worry some business leaders: California is threatening to put a new wealth tax on billionaires, while many on Wall Street are loudly protesting the policies of its new democratic socialist mayor, Zohran Mamdani.
All of which gives Johnson more of an opportunity to appeal to the CEOs and wealthy executives he wants to bring to Dallas.
"I really do believe that we represent the future of capitalism in this country, and we are a sanctuary city from socialism," he says.
Is there space for both Wall Street and Y'all Street?
Business leaders in Dallas tend to deflect the politicians' heated rhetoric.
"I don't think Dallas looks at things as a zero-sum game," Goldman's Khalil says, adding that the region's growth is "just the natural evolution of the financial services industry."
After all, however much Goldman Sachs is investing in Dallas, it isn't abandoning New York. Similarly, many other banks and financial institutions expanding in Texas are doing so in addition to their Wall Street homes — not instead of them.
The hype versus the reality of Y'all Street might be best illustrated by the Texas Stock Exchange, a buzzy local startup that just opened for trading in July, years after announcing its plans to shake up the U.S. stock market.
It's backed by financial heavyweights, including Goldman Sachs and BlackRock, and has clearly rattled its established competitors: Since last year, both the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq have opened Texas outposts.
There's "incredible excitement for everything that is going on in the state of Texas and around the Texas ecosystem," says NYSE President Lynn Martin.
But the Texas Stock Exchange has an uphill battle to break into this part of Wall Street. The centuries-old New York Stock Exchange and its rival Nasdaq, founded in 1971, have dominated U.S. stock exchanges for decades — so far fending off challenges from newer startups.
Still, even these well-established incumbents acknowledge that Wall Street as an industry now stretches far beyond its namesake location in New York City.
As NYSE's Martin acknowledges, "Texas has actually become our biggest state."
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