California has always sold itself as the place where the impossible becomes possible. It is where gold was discovered, where the internet was born, where the next big thing is always just around the corner. But this November, voters will decide whether to make the state a little less welcoming to the people who have made it one of the most economically powerful places on earth. The proposed billionaire wealth tax is meant to make the ultra-rich pay more, and it has already triggered a quiet, powerful reaction. Some of the state’s wealthiest people are not waiting to see what happens. They are leaving. The most striking departures are Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the Google cofounders who helped define Silicon Valley. According to their representatives, Page, who is worth an estimated $288 billion, now lives in Florida. Brin, worth an estimated $265 billion, now lives in Nevada. Together, they are worth more than half a trillion dollars, and their decisions to leave are not just personal choices. They are public statements. Page has spent $173 million on two homes in Miami’s Coconut Grove over the past year. Brin, who still has two ex-wives and three children in California, bought a $42 million home on the Nevada side of Lake Tahoe. He has also spent more than $100 million over the past year opposing the billionaire tax. For most people, that kind of money is impossible to imagine. For Brin, it is the price of sending a message: California is no longer his home, and he is not going to pay for the privilege of being unwanted. The proposed tax has become a symbol of a broader fight over inequality, and the Google cofounders are its most prominent refugees. They built their fortunes in a state that gave them cheap offices, brilliant colleagues, and a culture of risk-taking. Now they are being asked to give something back, and their answer has been to walk away. It is a strange ending to a California story that began with two Stanford graduate students in a garage. But it is also a very human one. People do not like to feel resented, even when they are worth a quarter of a trillion dollars. And when they feel resented, they leave.
Yet for all the drama, the moves are surprisingly hard to verify. Forbes reporters searched for updated voter registrations and declarations of domicile for Page and Brin and found none. Their spokespeople declined to provide any proof. Billionaires live in a world of lawyers and trusts, and residency can be a carefully managed legal fiction. But the evidence on the ground is hard to ignore. Page’s Miami purchases are a matter of public record. Brin’s Nevada house is a matter of public record. So is the $100 million-plus he spent fighting the tax. And the pattern goes far beyond the Google founders. According to Forbes’ analysis of the richest people in every state, the wealthiest resident of at least half a dozen states used to call California home. Pierre Omidyar, the eBay founder, left the Bay Area about 25 years ago and settled in Hawaii after a brief stop in Nevada. Meg Whitman, the former eBay CEO and Hewlett-Packard executive who once ran for California governor, moved to New Mexico after serving as U.S. ambassador to Kenya. Alex Karp, the Palantir cofounder, went to Stanford Law School and built his company in Palo Alto, but he has since moved the headquarters first to Colorado and then to Florida. His main residence is now a 500-acre estate in Lyman, New Hampshire, a town with fewer than 600 people. Brad Smith, the former Intuit CEO, worth an estimated $700 million, left Silicon Valley in 2022 and went home to West Virginia, where he is now the richest person in his state and president of Marshall University. These are not obscure financiers. They are some of the most famous names in American business, and they are all gone. It would be easy to dismiss each move as an individual choice, but together they form a map of discontent. The destinations vary—Hawaii, New Mexico, New Hampshire, West Virginia, Nevada, Florida—but the starting point is always the same. California, once the ultimate destination for ambitious people, is becoming a place that ambitious people leave.
What makes these departures so striking is that they are not driven by poverty or persecution. They are driven by a tax bill that has not even passed yet. The proposed wealth tax would single out billionaires, and the uncertainty alone has been enough to change behavior. For someone like Page, the tax is not a line item; it is an existential threat. It represents a government that sees his fortune as a problem rather than an achievement. It tells him that the state where he built Google views him as a piggy bank to be cracked open. And so he leaves, not because he cannot afford to pay, but because he does not want to live in a place that defines him by his money. This is a difficult thing for ordinary people to understand. A person who has $288 billion could pay a 1% wealth tax and still have more money than anyone could ever spend. But the math is not the point. The point is freedom. The point is gratitude. The point is the feeling that California is no longer on his side. Brin’s $100 million in political spending is an even clearer signal. He is willing to spend more than the tax would likely cost him, at least in the short term, because he is fighting for a principle. And principles, for billionaires, are very expensive. The result is a strange reversal of the usual California story. Instead of dreaming of coming to Silicon Valley, the state’s most successful sons are dreaming of leaving it. There is something almost tragic about this. California gave these men everything: education, opportunity, a platform to change the world. But the relationship has soured, and now both sides are paying the price. The state loses their tax dollars and their prestige; the billionaires lose the place they once called home. In the end, it is a divorce, and like many divorces, it is being fought over money.
Florida has become the most popular destination for this new wave of billionaire refugees, and it is not hard to see why. The state has no income tax, no capital gains tax, and a political culture that welcomes wealth with open arms. Ken Griffin, the founder of Citadel, moved from Chicago to Miami. Larry Ellison, the Oracle cofounder, sold his last California property in Pacific Palisades in December and changed his voter registration to Florida in 2023. Jeff Bezos, the Amazon founder and one of the richest people on earth, left Washington State after it passed a capital gains tax; his estimated $381 billion fortune now makes him the richest person in Florida, at least for now. Howard Schultz, the former Starbucks CEO, also left Washington for Florida after that tax was enacted. Even Mark Zuckerberg, who is still California’s richest person, bought a $170 million mansion in Miami earlier this year. He has not said he is leaving, but the purchase has the unmistakable look of an exit strategy. The migration is not just about homes. Companies are moving too. Palantir relocated its headquarters from Silicon Valley to Colorado and then to Florida. Karp, the company’s cofounder, owns two neighboring homes in Miami Beach, though his primary residence remains that quiet estate in New Hampshire. The billionaire class is following the path of least resistance, and California has made itself the opposite of that. Every time a state tries to tax wealth, it sends a message to the wealthy: your presence is not worth the trouble. Florida has heard that message, and it has responded by rolling out the welcome mat. The result is a kind of tax-haven arms race, with states competing to attract the ultra-rich by promising to leave them alone. California is losing that race, not because it lacks wealth, but because it has decided that wealth should be shared. And in a country where money can buy almost anything, including residency, the wealthy will always find a place that agrees with them.
Yet California is not fading away. It still has 255 billionaires, more than any other state. New York has 153, Florida 138, and Texas 88. The state is also producing a new generation of AI billionaires, founders who are building fortunes even faster than the previous tech boom. The total wealth of California’s billionaires is estimated at $1.87 trillion, an almost incomprehensible sum. But that number is no longer the largest in the country. Texas has pulled ahead, with an estimated $1.94 trillion, thanks almost entirely to one man: Elon Musk. When Forbes locked in its net worths on October 9, Musk was worth an estimated $1 trillion all by himself. His fortune dipped to about $970 billion by Tuesday, but even that is enough to tip the scales. Florida’s billionaires, meanwhile, are worth an estimated $1.6 trillion, and New York’s about $1 trillion. Musk left California years ago, and his departure was one of the first signs that the state’s grip on the ultra-rich was slipping. Now the Google cofounders are gone too, and the title of California’s richest person has fallen to Mark Zuckerberg, worth an estimated $246 billion. Zuckerberg has held that title for three straight years, but only because Page and Brin left. If he follows them to Miami, the title would pass to Jensen Huang, the Nvidia CEO, whose estimated $199 billion fortune is tied to the AI boom. Huang has said he will stay in California no matter what happens in November, making him a rare loyalist among the centibillionaire set. But even he must wonder how long the state can continue to bleed its wealthiest residents without consequences. The next generation of billionaires may be even less attached to California than the last one. They can live anywhere, and they know it. The state has to convince them not just that it is a good place to make money, but that it is a good place to belong.
In the end, the story of California’s billionaire tax is not really about billionaires. It is about the rest of us, and the kind of society we want to build. California is a place of extraordinary opportunity and heartbreaking inequality. It has more billionaires than any other state, and also some of the worst homelessness. It has world-class universities and underfunded public schools. The wealth tax is an attempt to make the very rich pay more for the common good, and there is a certain moral logic to it. But the proposed tax also carries a risk. If it drives away the people who create so much of the state’s wealth, it may leave California with less money to solve its problems, not more. The billionaires who have already left are not victims. They will be fine. Page will enjoy his Miami sunsets. Brin will ski at Lake Tahoe. Ellison will continue to live wherever he pleases. But their departures are a warning. They are telling California that there is a limit to what even the richest people will tolerate, and that the state’s progressive dreams have consequences. Voters will have their say in November. They can choose to tax wealth and hope the rich stay, or they can choose to make California more welcoming to the people who build fortunes. There is no perfect answer. But as the Google cofounders settle into their new lives outside the Golden State, one thing is certain: California is no longer the only place where dreams come true. It is just one more option, and even the people who made it what it is are starting to look elsewhere. For the rest of us, the question is simpler. If the billionaires leave, will the rest of us be better off? Or will we just be left with the same problems, and fewer resources to solve them? The November vote will answer that question, at least for now.
