California's proposed wealth tax has already driven 48 billionaires and $1.1 trillion in assets out of state — before a single vote is cast. The tax's fine print treats voting control as ownership, meaning founders get taxed on 10x their actual equity. When the top 10% who fund 76% of tax revenue flee, working families inherit the bill — and Washington State is running the same losing playbook.
Read Top Post →Bay Area startups raised $154 billion in 2025—more than the next 9 top startup regions combined. OpenAI and Anthropic alone accounted for 30% of all venture investment nationwide in Q4. This is the golden goose Sacramento is threatening to slaughter. SF Bay startups succeed at 2.5x the rate of startups anywhere else in the world.
Jan 29, 2026 · 4 min
SaaStr founder Jason Lemkin says the quiet part out loud: leave after Series B, go distributed. Founders who aren’t yet billionaires are getting the message—one just canceled a second California factory, sending hundreds of manufacturing jobs to another state. The next Apple, Google, and Nvidia won’t be built here.
Jan 17, 2026 · 2 min
The math gets starker: California’s top 10% pay 76% of all state taxes. The CA Wealth Exodus tracker now shows 47 billionaires gone, taking $882 billion and an estimated $13.2 billion in annual revenue. The departures read like a tech hall of fame: Larry Page ($274.7B), Sergey Brin ($253.4B), Peter Thiel ($29.4B).
Jan 17, 2026 · 3 min
David Friedberg’s private poll shows 80-90% of affected billionaires have already left or will leave. Pirate Wires surveyed 21 billionaires—roughly 10% of California’s total—and every single one is planning to exit. The fiscal damage: $2-2.5 trillion in assets fleeing, representing $20 billion in lost annual revenue.
Jan 15, 2026 · 4 min
The kill switch hidden in the ballot language: a November amendment treats voting control as ownership. A founder with 10% equity but 10x voting shares gets taxed as if they own 100%. For Larry Page and Sergey Brin, this means being assessed on $1.2 trillion each—creating $60 billion annual tax bills they literally cannot pay without selling control of their companies.
Jan 13, 2026 · 6 min
Six days after Mahan’s warning, Chamath reports $1 trillion has fled—half of all billionaire wealth in California. The symbolism is brutal: Sergey Brin terminated or moved 15 California LLCs in the 10 days before Christmas. Both Google founders—the men who put Silicon Valley on the map—are reducing their California footprint.
Jan 11, 2026 · 3 min
San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan goes on CNBC with the warning Sacramento refuses to hear: billionaires will flee a 5% asset seizure, and the tax burden lands on everyone else. California’s top 1% pay 46% of state taxes. Reports already show Peter Thiel and Larry Page weighing exit options—and the ballot measure’s retroactive clause means even those who left could be on the hook.
Jan 09, 2026 · 2 min
