8 billionaires who fled California before the “Wealth Tax” hit — and one who didn’t

California’s 2026 Billionaire Tax Act (Initiative No. 25-0024) is a citizen-led ballot measure, sponsored by SEIU-United Healthcare Workers West, that proposes a one-time 5% excise tax on the global net worth of individuals exceeding $1 billion. Its defining feature is a retroactive residency snapshot: anyone who was a California resident on January 1, 2026 would owe the tax, even if they later moved, with voters set to decide on November 3, 2026. That single clause created a narrow late-2025 window for roughly 200 affected individuals: stay and risk a 5% levy on all global wealth, or establish a new domicile before New Year’s Eve.

The measure was projected to raise about $100 billion for Medi-Cal, food assistance, and education. A Hoover Institution study by Senior Fellow Joshua Rauh and Research Fellow Benjamin Jaros found that nearly 30% of the tax base departed before the initiative even qualified for the ballot, cutting projected revenue from $100 billion to roughly $40 billion. Factoring in the permanent loss of future income tax payments from those departed residents, the study estimated a net present value of negative $24.7 billion for the state. On April 26, 2026, supporters submitted approximately 1.6 million signatures — nearly double the 874,641 required — formally putting the measure on course for the November ballot. Here is who walked, in order of net worth.

1. Larry Page (Florida) $274.7B

The Alphabet co-founder established primary residency in Florida and purchased over $173 million in real estate in Miami’s Coconut Grove. He also converted his family office Koop from a California-based entity to a Delaware corporation registered at a Florida address. Page and Brin’s combined departure alone accounted for an estimated $26.7 billion reduction in the initiative’s projected tax collections, according to the Hoover study.

2. Sergey Brin (Florida) $253.4B

Brin acquired a $51 million waterfront mansion on Allison Island in Miami and shifted Alphabet-controlled entities to Florida to sever California ties. He also co-founded Building a Better California alongside former Google CEO Eric Schmidt — a political spending committee that raised $80 million by April 2026, with Brin contributing more than half. The committee is backing three competing ballot initiatives designed to block or neutralize the wealth tax.

3. Mark Zuckerberg (Florida) $239.0B

In early 2026, reports surfaced that Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan were acquiring a $170 million estate on Miami’s Indian Creek Island, known in luxury real estate circles as the Billionaire Bunker and already home to Jeff Bezos and Carl Icahn. A Meta spokesperson declined to confirm the change of primary residence, but the scale and timing of the purchase were unmistakable. Under the wealth tax, Zuckerberg would have owed approximately $12 billion on his net worth as of January 1, 2026.

4. Peter Thiel (Florida) $27.5B

The PayPal and Palantir co-founder moved his family investment firm’s operations from California to Miami in late December 2025. His company remains headquartered in Los Angeles, but personal residency and family office functions have shifted east. Thiel pointed to California’s “hostile” tax environment as the deciding factor, and later donated $3 million to the California Business Roundtable, a separate opposition group.

5. Travis Kalanick (Texas) $8.7B

The Uber founder and current CEO of Atoms (formerly City Storage Systems) completed his move to Austin on December 18, 2025. Asked about the timing on a podcast, he said the move was “prior to January.” Had he stayed in California through the snapshot date, he stood to owe between approximately $180 million and $435 million. The relocation coincided with a corporate rebrand and a strategic pivot toward industrial robotics and AI.

6. Don Hankey (Nevada) $8.2B

The Los Angeles native who built a fortune in auto lending left his Malibu estate for a $21 million penthouse in Las Vegas, saying high-net-worth individuals were no longer “wanted” in California. Luxury agents in Las Vegas reported that the California share of buyers in the market jumped from roughly 25% to nearly 80% after the tax proposal was announced, a shift Forbes linked directly to the initiative.

7. Steven Spielberg (New York) $7.1B

The director established new primary residency in New York City on January 1, 2026. Representatives cited a desire to be closer to family, but the timing — landing exactly on the residency snapshot date — led fiscal analysts to include him in the tax-motivated cohort. New York imposes its own high income tax rates, so the move was about breaking California residency rather than finding a low-tax haven.

The Counterexample, and the Audit Risk

One prominent holdout refused to budge. NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA | NVDA Price Prediction) CEO Jensen Huang told Bloomberg in January 2026 that he was “perfectly fine” with the tax, even though it would cost him approximately $8 billion. He doubled down at the Stanford Graduate School of Business in April, telling Congressman Ro Khanna: “I say to everybody, ‘Move to California, don’t leave.’ It’s the highest taxes in the world, but it’s okay.” His reasoning centers on workforce access: NVIDIA operates in Silicon Valley because that is where the talent is concentrated. Governor Gavin Newsom, notably, has opposed the tax despite sharing Huang’s affinity for the state, calling the proposal something that “makes no sense” and is “really damaging to the state.”

Those who did leave may still face a fight. The California Franchise Tax Board’s “close connection” residency audits can challenge domicile claims, and the agency completed 520 residency audits in 2023, more than double its 2019 pace. Constitutional questions also loom: because the tax applies retroactively to anyone who was a resident as of January 1, 2026, legal challenges are widely expected if the measure passes. In May 2026, the editorial board of The Washington Post called the initiative “self-destructive,” concluding it “has already cost the state more in lost future revenue from income taxes than it would raise.” The vote is now scheduled for November 3, 2026.

Editor’s note: This update adds the April 2026 signature submission (approximately 1.6 million signatures collected, nearly double the required threshold), corrects the founding of Building a Better California as a joint effort by Sergey Brin and Eric Schmidt with $80 million raised, and incorporates Hoover Institution findings on the $536 billion removed from the tax base, Jensen Huang’s April 2026 Stanford remarks, Governor Newsom’s opposition, and The Washington Post editorial board’s May 2026 public opposition to the initiative.