California’s billionaires pour cash into elections as big tech seeks new allies

Tech billionaires are leveraging tens of millions of dollars to influence California politics in a marked uptick from their previous participation in affairs at the state capitol.

Behemoths such as Google and Meta are getting involved in campaigns for November’s elections, as are venture capitalists, cryptocurrency entrepreneurs and Palantir’s co-founders.

The industry’s goals run the gamut – from fighting a billionaire tax to supporting a techie gubernatorial candidate to firing up new, influential super political action committees (Pacs).

The phenomenon squarely fits the moment for the state’s politics – with 2026 being the year that Politico has dubbed “the big tech flex”.

Gavin Newsom, California’s tech-friendly governor who has been quick to veto legislation that cramps the sector’s unfettered growth, is reaching his term limit.

That means Silicon Valley needs to find a new ally.

The industry may have found its candidate in an upstart mayor from San Jose, Matt Mahan.

Silicon Valley’s businesses and billionaires – some of the richest and most powerful on Earth, most of which are headquartered in California – are in the midst of a huge AI boom.

Industry insiders say tech companies need to ensure they can continue to flourish without regulations getting in the way. “This is a golden opportunity and a golden moment for tech to reset its priorities and its perceptions,” said David McCuan, a political science professor at Sonoma State University who studies state lobbying.

Rather than going all-in on one candidate or issue, McCuan said the tech sector was using a multi-pronged attack in California.

Tech billionaires are contributing to campaigns ranging from candidates for governor to local city council and school board races.

They are also donating heavily to groups campaigning for relaxed taxation and minimal regulation around AI. “If you’re an uber-zillionaire, you give money early and often,” McCuan said. “They have more wealth and resources than they’ve ever had before, so that allows them to play on both sides of the aisle and up and down the ballot and across issues like never before.” Unlike other industries, such as oil and pharma, tech has been relatively tame when it comes to lobbying in the state.

The industry has tended to focus on narrow state issues and instead spent big and broad at the federal level (aside from Uber and Lyft’s giant $200m ballot measure campaign in 2020).

That ethos has changed.

California is now ground zero for tech titans working to become omnipresent in politics.

Robert Singleton, the senior director of policy in California for the tech industry group Chamber of Progress, said this moment has been brewing for a long time and it just needed the right thing to set it off. “The introduction of that billionaire tax obviously galvanized a lot of wealthy individuals who don’t want to see that happen, and who will spend money to make sure it doesn’t happen,” Singleton said. “That tipped them into wanting to get more involved.” Billionaires fight a tax The “California Billionaire Tax Act”, often referred to simply as the billionaire tax, is a proposal that would require any California resident worth more than $1bn to pay a one-off, 5% tax on their assets to help cover education, food assistance and healthcare programs in the state.

It’s sponsored by the Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West, and if it receives enough signatures from California voters, it will go to the ballot in November.

When the proposal was put forward at the end of last year, many among tech’s billionaire elite threw a tantrum.