The billionaires of California had a problem.

It was the fall of 2025, and a proposed ballot initiative to tax 5% of their net worth was rapidly collecting signatures. Crafted with punitive precision by the SEIU United Healthcare Workers West union, the tax would help replace healthcare funding decimated by the Trump administration — while also delivering a blow to the piggy banks of the state’s estimated 200 billionaires. 

In an encrypted group chat on Signal, a who’s who of tech titans met to commiserate and toss out solutions: Should they appeal to the governor? Run counter-initiatives? Put up candidates for office?

The members of the chat, some of whom are reported here for the first time, read like a Forbes list of Silicon Valley elite: Google cofounder Sergey Brin, venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, former Zynga CEO Mark Pincus, former Sequoia Capital head and chairman of The Standard Michael Moritz, Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan, PayPal cofounder Max Levchin, Sequoia partner Shaun Maguire, Stripe CEO Patrick Collison, Ripple cofounder Chris Larsen, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, venture capitalist Ron Conway, Greenoaks Capital founder Neil Mehta, investor and “All-In” podcast cohost David Friedberg, Future Ventures founder Steve Jurvetson and his wife, Genevieve — dozens of tycoons, some of whom were hyper-active in the chat and others who engaged not at all. 

“It’s kind of like, ‘Who wasn’t in it?’ to be honest,” said one of two people who saw the chat and described its contents to The Standard. “And it just kept getting added to.”

At some point, a chat participant proposed an action more audacious than lobbying Gov. Gavin Newsom or funding an anti-tax measure: What if the group simply bought the signature-collecting company the union was using, then prohibited it from collecting more signatures? 

“Of course, that’s what they would think,” said the person who had seen the messages. “That’s what you would do in business: If there’s an impediment, just buy it.”

The proposal was emblematic of the strategies the billionaire class has tested over the last eight months: unorthodox, expensive, and increasingly desperate. Since the union’s Billionaire Tax Act campaign was launched last fall, the tech elites have organized in secret, scheduling and aborting Zoom meetings, starting and deleting and uninviting members from group chats, and casually throwing tens of millions of dollars at whatever idea seems poised to defeat the initiative and scare the union into submission.

The campaign has not exactly been a rousing success. SEIU gathered nearly double the number of signatures required to qualify its tax measure for the November ballot, and the measure appears generally — if not overwhelmingly — popular with voters (opens in new tab). Currently, the best shot at defeating it lies not with the billionaires but with Newsom, who is aggressively attempting to negotiate it off the ballot before the June 25 ratification deadline.

Still, the sprawling apparatus of political groups the Billionaire Tax Act has spawned —  not to mention the newly activated network of ultrawealthy citizens it has angered — is poised to change California politics, even after the tax fight is over.

“This was a catalyst to bring a lot of tech money into the state political system that otherwise had largely been on the sidelines,” said Marty Wilson, a Republican consultant and former California Chamber of Commerce official. “I think this served as a wakeup call for these folks.”

Though the campaign against the wealth tax would soon spark a tidal wave of threats to leave California — and, in a few cases, billionaires relocating to Florida and Nevada — it began more humbly. The early conversations on Signal were “mostly kvetching,” said the person who saw the conversation. 

Many of the billionaires (or almost-billionaires, in some cases) were united in their contempt for the tax, the unions, and the unceasing leftward drift of California — but there were also a fair number of disagreements. At one point, said a chat observer, Conway sent a strongly worded message urging the group not to be so critical of Newsom. When the chat disbanded in January and some members splintered into smaller private chats, Conway was not invited, the person said. 

Ironically, Conway was one of the first among them to take decisive action against the tax. The longtime Democratic donor gave $100,000 in November to Stop the Squeeze, a group run by two of the governor’s advisers to explore how the initiative could be defeated, according to public filings. He then attempted to rally friends to the cause, writing in an email that the tax would be “devastating — driving out high net worth individuals, jobs, investment, and revenue for the future, cutting services and putting the state’s economy in a death spiral.” Between Newsom’s “staunch opposition” and a well-funded campaign, Conway argued, “we can defeat this measure when we inform voters of the true consequences for California.”

Conway was not alone in this argument: Newsom and other prominent Democrats (opens in new tab) have expressed concern that the tax would drive billionaires out of the state, reducing future tax revenue, and unfairly penalize homegrown entrepreneurs by including voting shares in private companies as part of the calculation of their personal wealth. Other unions (opens in new tab) have complained about the one-time nature of the tax, and the fact that proceeds would go almost entirely to healthcare, rather than to the state’s general fund.

Still, few of Conway’s peers took a public stance on the issue until December, when Silicon Valley Rep. Ro Khanna fired off a tweet defending the tax and mocking the billionaires fleeing the state to avoid it. (“I will miss them very much,” he wrote sarcastically.) While the debate had largely played out in private until then, the tweet from Khanna — who’d previously received support from Andreessen, Conway, and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, among other tech leaders — opened the floodgates. 

• Labor groups split on Billionaire Tax

• Tom Steyer spent over half a billion trying to get into politics. So far, not so good

• Dueling SF tax measures are failing. Lurie says that’s just fine

“Passing this tax will destroy innovation in California,” Tan tweeted in response to Khanna. “It’s not a tax, you’re confiscating 5% of people’s assets — which is illegal and will be overturned eventually,” commented “All In” host Jason Calacanis. “why stop with billionaires?! why stop at 5%?! keep going, ro, keep going!!” added his fellow host, Friedberg. 

Khanna attempted to clarify his position in follow-up tweets, but the damage was done. Cooper Teboe, Khanna’s chief political strategist, said the congressman’s office was inundated with texts, calls, and emails from dozens of major Silicon Valley players expressing their displeasure. Some were polite, he said, but many were livid. 

“We received many angry notes — both from folks we knew and those we’d never met — with notes of ‘Good luck, you’re going to need it, we’re coming for you now,’” Teboe said, adding that several offered him jobs in order to kneecap Khanna’s fundraising option.

The messages were not empty threats: In the weeks following Khanna’s tweet, tech executives started hunting for someone to challenge the five-term congressman in his coming primary. Evan Low, a former California assemblymember and CEO of the LGBTQ+ Victory Fund, told The Standard he was approached by multiple tech founders and venture capitalists who said there would be “upward of $15 million” waiting for him if he decided to run against Khanna. Low said he immediately declined, out of respect for the congressman.

The tech titans ultimately found a willing collaborator in Ethan Agarwal, a tech founder and political unknown running a long-shot campaign for governor. Agarwal, who has described himself as “fiercely pro-capitalism,” agreed to switch races after being courted by a group of tech pooh-bahs. Within weeks of Agarwal declaring his candidacy, Tan, Armstrong, Conway, and venture capitalist Blake Byers all contributed the maximum to his campaign, and “All-In” host Chamath Palihapitiya was cohosting fundraisers at the Atherton home of investor and Sacramento Kings owner Vivek Ranadivé. 

Around the same time, some members of the Signal chat started talking up Matt Mahan, the moderate mayor of San Jose, as a fitting candidate for governor. Unimpressed with the field and angered by the introduction of the billionaire tax, members of the chat started discussing how they could convince Mahan to enter the race and how to support him once he did. In an interview, Eric Jaye, Mahan’s former campaign director, referred to it as a “loosely organized recruitment campaign” of tech donors.

Have thoughts on this story?

Teboe says he met with Mahan in November, and that the mayor was decidedly against running at the time. He also says he encouraged members of Mahan’s team not to trust the billionaires’ promises of campaign funding. Still, by late January, Mahan had changed his mind, throwing his hat in the ring and raking in donations from Moritz, Brin, Collison, and Netflix cofounder Reed Hastings, among other tech elite.

Mahan called the idea that he jumped into the race due to promises of billionaire funding “just flat wrong,” adding that he launched his campaign when it “became clear to me that no one else was going to run on the things we need to be successful in San Jose and across California.”

But Jaye said the money talk was “clearly part of the calculation” in launching the campaign. Added another political consultant of Mahan: “He was clearly led into the race by the siren song of billionaire money that swore it was going to be there for him.”

As some of the state’s billionaires attempted to wrangle candidates for office, others tried launching political groups to confront the tax head-on — though they soon learned that was more difficult than they’d expected.

In January, Larsen, Armstrong, and other tech leaders reached out to consultants behind Fairshake, a crypto PAC that had scored major legislative wins in the 2024 election cycle. The Fairshake officials hired a team in California and started a PAC called Golden State Promise. But despite the involvement of other tech titans and a $30 million fundraising goal, the PAC has so far only raised $10 million from a single donor — Larsen.

A spokesperson for Golden State Promise said it was the “only well-funded campaign that is directly opposing the wealth tax” and plans to raise more as the campaign progresses.

Donations also failed to materialize for Stop the Squeeze, the group Conway funded in November. According to sources, many of the billionaires distrusted Newsom and were hesitant to fund an entity run by his longtime advisers. Plus, a rash of other groups were popping up that catered to the growing list of panicked billionaires. 

Among them were California Renewal, a project of Mehta and other venture capitalists, which promised to build a lasting counterforce to the labor movement, and Building a Better California, a group seeded with $25 million from Brin to run initiatives to combat the tax. The California Business Roundtable, a 50-year-old institution, was also aggressively fundraising for its anti-tax efforts, thrilled that the tech industry finally seemed interested in pushing the policy agenda it had been championing for decades. 

At one point, there were so many organizations fundraising off the threat of the Billionaire Tax Act that two donors — Ritankar Das of Titan Holdings and Genevieve Jurvetson — tried to organize a Zoom call to get them all in one place. The idea, according to someone with knowledge of the plans, was for donors to appear with their screens blacked out to maintain privacy while representatives for each organization took turns pitching their visions — like an episode of “Shark Tank” in the dark. The idea was eventually scrapped over fear that details would leak to the press, the source said. 

There were also disagreements over strategy: Golden State Promise came out early with attack ads against the tax, while Building a Better California refused to take a public stance. (Spokespeople for the latter group, which has sponsored three ballot initiatives that would invalidate the tax if passed, regularly claim the point is not to defeat the tax but to enact wholesale governmental spending reforms.) The groups even bickered about what to call the tax, according to one person on the inside: Golden State Promise refers to it in ads as the “billionaire tax,” while Building a Better California prefers the more inclusive “wealth tax.”

Members of the Signal chat also quibbled about how much to trust Newsom, according to two political consultants familiar with the discussions. While the governor had come out strongly against the initiative, some of the group members remained terrified that he would cut a back-door deal with tax architect Dave Regan, president of SEIU-UHW.

“They kind of wanted two things,” one of the consultants said. “On one hand, they want the governor to make the wealth tax go away, which requires negotiations. On the other hand, they don’t want the governor to give in to Regan. So guys, which is it?”

As the billionaires were bickering over details, supporters of the tax were stockpiling signatures. Despite Building a Better California pushing up the cost by paying collection firms a whopping $15 per signature for its counter-measures, the coalition of labor unions supporting the tax reported in April that it had collected 1.6 million signatures — almost twice as many as  needed to qualify for the ballot. In a victorious press conference (opens in new tab) the next day, SEIU-UHW executive member Mayra Castaneda described the fight for the tax as a “David-versus-Goliath battle,” adding,“David has just won the first round.”

A few weeks later, David won the next round, too. Mahan, the billionaires’ chosen candidate for governor, lost decisively in the June 2 primary, earning just 3.7% of the state vote and conceding immediately after the polls closed. (As multiple postmortems have revealed, the tech donors ultimately gave millions less than the Mahan campaign needed to succeed.) Agarwal, the challenger they’d drafted to defeat Khanna, failed to make it out of the primary, too, earning just 6.5% of the vote in the district and coming in fourth, behind two Republicans.

Headlines the next day crowed at the failure of the Silicon Valley candidates, while Khanna’s team took a victory lap.

“Many of them are bold, and their tactics are stupid,” said Teboe of the billionaire donors. “They’re trying to deploy the same tactics they’ve used in business into politics. None of it has worked, because they don’t know what they’re doing.”

Still, the fight is far from over. The state Legislature still has two weeks to get the tax off the November ballot by offering a compromise bill that satisfies SEIU-UHW. Newsom is reportedly (opens in new tab) working hard to negotiate a legislative solution, rounding up interest groups and other unions to come out in opposition to the tax. In the last several weeks, three healthcare groups and a major union, the California Teachers Association, have publicly denounced the initiative.

Polling has put public support for the measure at around 50%, leaving it vulnerable to well-funded outside attacks. And the recent defeat of San Francisco’s Proposition D — a tax on companies that pay their CEOs significantly more than their workers — suggests that California’s appetite for taxing the rich does have its limits. Moderate candidates and propositions backed by billionaires like Moritz and Larsen also over-performed in the city’s elections this month.

The billionaires also seem to be slightly better organized as they head into round three. Past the “throwing spaghetti at the wall” phase, many seem to have coalesced around the efforts of Building a Better California, which qualified two of its counter-initiatives for the ballot just days after the unions qualified the Billionaire Tax Act. The group has raised more than $100 million for its efforts — mostly from Brin, but also from Moritz, Collison, DoorDash CEO Tony Xu, venture capitalist John Doerr, and others. 

Even consultants for other groups praised Building a Better California’s leader, little-known Sacramento consultant Ned Wigglesworth, for doing the one thing tech billionaires truly value: shipping product.

“[Wigglesworth] has really captured the hearts and minds of the billionaire class,” one consultant said. “They got the signatures, they did all this outreach, and they did it in a very short amount of time. And for a very impatient crew, I think that stands out.”

Regardless of whether the tax passes, that may be the most lasting outcome of this fight: organizing the state’s famously impatient tech tycoons and getting them engaged in the notoriously slow world of Sacramento. Perhaps counter to what SEIU-UHW wanted, Silicon Valley billionaires are now more active in state politics than ever — and they have nearly a year’s worth of experience in starting political organizations, staffing up with Sacramento consultants, and convincing their favored candidates to run for office.

“We’re going to have a new political era with a new governor and with all these billionaires [involved],” said one strategist. “If there’s a way that [Building a Better California] can make this permanent, they have now solidified their real estate in the new political world.”