Legal Insights
Every July, CNBC releases its annual America’s Top State for Business rankings, prompting headlines about which State claimed the top spot.[1] This year, North Carolina slipped from first to second, edged out by Ohio by just nine points on a 2,500-point scale.[2] Yet, the rankings themselves are not the most compelling measure of the State’s business climate. For companies deciding where to incorporate, expand operations, and invest capital over the next decade, the most important considerations are the predictability of the legal system, the availability of talent, the cost of doing business, and the State’s ability to support sustained economic growth. On those measures, North Carolina remains a compelling option worth considering alongside other business-friendly states.
North Carolina’s Business Court Has a 30-Year Head Start
Since 2024, a string of companies, including Tesla and SpaceX, have reincorporated out of Delaware, citing frustration with Court of Chancery rulings on executive pay and governance.[3] In response to the DExit, Texas has moved aggressively to build the legal infrastructure to receive them. The Texas Business Court, a specialized commercial venue created by statute in 2023, began hearing cases in September 2024 and has been explicitly positioned as a credible alternative to Delaware’s Chancery Court. Last year, Texas widened that court’s jurisdiction to cover arbitration-related disputes and lowered its filing threshold, changes aimed squarely at the kind of company now shopping for a new legal home.
North Carolina has quietly run a version of that playbook since 1996, building decades of precedent. Its Business Court predates Texas’s by almost three decades, and its founding judge, Ben F. Tennile, is credited with helping lay the foundation for business courts other states later built. The fundamentals intrinsic in the North Carolina Business Courts are what Texas is now assembling from scratch in the last two years: a single judge carrying each case from filing through judgment, opinions that are written and published, and precedent that has had thirty years to accumulate. Sessions run out of courtrooms in Raleigh, Charlotte, Greensboro, and Winston-Salem, with filings handled almost entirely electronically. A company weighing where to incorporate, or where to litigate a commercial dispute, should rely on a refined system that has generations of legal precedent.
Billions in Investment, Thousands of Jobs: NC’s Operational Edge
Legal stability is only half the pitch, and arguably the smaller half. Where North Carolina actually separates itself is operations, where companies build, hire, and invest, which is what CNBC’s ranking is designed to measure. North Carolina ranked first in the nation for Economy this year, up from third in 2025, and has finished first or second in the overall rankings every year since 2021. North Carolina’s top tier higher education institutions, Duke, UNC-Chapel Hill, N.C. State, and Wake Forest among others, anchor the talent pipeline behind those numbers, part of why the State also climbed to third in CNBC’s Workforce category this year.[4] CNBC’s most significant methodology change for 2026 may also help explain North Carolina’s second place finish: infrastructure overtook economy as the most heavily weighted category. Yet, that change may ultimately play to North Carolina’s advantage, given the scale of infrastructure investment already underway across the State.[5]
JetZero broke ground this summer on a $4.7 billion aircraft assembly plant at Greensboro’s Piedmont Triad International Airport. The project is expected to employ roughly 14,500 people, which represents the largest single job commitment in North Carolina history.[6] Toyota has committed more than $8 billion to its EV battery plant in Randolph County.[7] The life-sciences sector is moving at a similar pace: Genentech more than doubled its investment in a Holly Springs biomanufacturing facility to roughly $2 billion this January, part of a Triangle-area build-out that includes Eli Lilly’s $16 billion-plus U.S. manufacturing commitment and Novo Nordisk’s $4.1 billion expansion in Johnston County.[8] Infrastructure’s new emphasis on utilities and computing power tracks a data-center wave reshaping the State’s investment map, too: Amazon’s $10 billion campus in Richmond County, Microsoft’s expansion in Catawba County and 1,400-acre Person County acquisition, Google’s $1.2 billion Lenoir facility, and Siemens’ $165 million in Carolinas grid-equipment manufacturing to supply it all. The State’s Department of Commerce credits 2025 with a record year for announced job creation, nearly 34,000 jobs and more than $23 billion in pledged investment.[9]
Why No Other State Combines All Three Advantages
Any single factor in isolation is not unique to North Carolina, but the combination is unprecedented. Delaware remains the default incorporation choice, home to most Fortune 500 companies, but it ranks just 32nd in CNBC’s operational measure. In other words, Delaware remains extraordinarily attractive as a place to charter a company while offering a less compelling environment in which to operate one, with new business formation only average and one of the country’s weakest small-business survival rates.[10] Florida, a common comparison for growing companies, holds a steady No. 8 in CNBC’s rankings.[11] New York, at No. 18, retains the advantages of a legacy economic and financial center without matching North Carolina’s cost-efficient operating environment.[12] Delaware offers unmatched depth in corporate law but a less competitive operating environment. Other fast-growing states offer attractive economics without North Carolina’s three decades of specialized commercial-court experience. Traditional financial centers offer talent and access to capital, but often at substantially higher cost of doing business. North Carolina’s emerging advantage is that companies increasingly do not have to choose among those attributes.
North Carolina’s case rests on the convergence of those advantages. It offers a decades-old specialized commercial court alongside a corporate income tax rate of 2 percent in 2026, the lowest flat rate of any State that levies one and part of a legislated path toward zero by 2030.[13] That legal and tax environment sits alongside a nationally competitive workforce, major research universities, and an investment pipeline measured in the tens of billions of dollars. Two of the most important considerations for companies deciding where to incorporate and operate: (1) a predictable legal forum, and (2) a demonstrated ability to support large-scale investment, are not new to North Carolina in 2026. They are the product of three decades spent building the legal and economic infrastructure that companies now demand. For businesses weighing a Delaware exit, or simply deciding where to grow next, that foundation may prove far more durable than a No. 1 ranking.
[1] https://www.carolinajournal.com/cnbc-nc-in-top-2-States-for-business-for-6th-straight-year/(opens in new tab)
[2] https://www.commerce.nc.gov/news/press-releases/2025/07/10/cnbc-names-north-carolina-1-State-business(opens in new tab)
[3] https://wustllawreview.org/2025/11/12/texas-and-dexits-can-the-texas-business-courts-drive-delawares-downfall/
[4] https://www.carolinajournal.com/cnbc-nc-in-top-2-States-for-business-for-6th-straight-year/(opens in new tab)
[5] https://www.cnbc.com/2026/06/16/2026-americas-top-States-business-rankings-methodology.html?msockid=249255eb48e76cd9363c424549316d1e(opens in new tab)
[6] https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/jetzero-breaks-ground-on-first-aircraft-factory-in-greensboro-north-carolina-302800356.html(opens in new tab)
[7] https://edpnc.com/news/toyota-october-2023-battery-expansion/(opens in new tab)
[8] https://www.gene.com/media/press-releases/15096/2026-01-20/genentech-more-than-doubles-investment-i(opens in new tab) and https://www.wral.com/business/genentech-expansion-holly-springs-feb-2026/(opens in new tab)
[9] https://www.carolinajournal.com/cnbc-nc-in-top-2-States-for-business-for-6th-straight-year/(opens in new tab)
[10] https://www.cnbc.com/2026/07/13/best-State-economies-2026.html?msockid=249255eb48e76cd9363c424549316d1e(opens in new tab)
[11] https://www.cnbc.com/2025/07/10/north-carolina-top-State-for-business-america.html(opens in new tab)
[12] https://www.cnbc.com/2025/07/10/north-carolina-top-State-for-business-america.html(opens in new tab)
[13] https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/State/State-corporate-income-tax-rates-brackets/(opens in new tab)
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