Low-key billionaire who became world's second-richest man moves out of Silicon Valley over proposed wealth tax
Billionaire Larry Page is saying goodbye to California, the American state that hosts Silicon Valley, the center of the United States' technology industry. The Google co-founder has severed ties between California and much of his assets that risked exposing him to a proposed new wealth tax in the state, according to documents reviewed by Business Insider.
Page's family office, called Koop, was moved from California in late December and registered in the state of Delaware, according to official documents filed in both states. A document has also been filed to move Dynatomics, LLC, another of his businesses, from California to Delaware with a new headquarters in Keller, Texas.
Page launched Dynatomics in 2023, a new startup focused on applying artificial intelligence (AI) to aircraft manufacturing. A source close to Page told Business Insider that the startup's team continues to work from California for now, but that the billionaire has already left the US East Coast state.
The New York Times reported in December that Page had told people he was considering moving to Florida because of a ballot initiative that would tax the state's wealthiest residents.
The wealth tax that scared the billionaires
The proposed law introduced late last year would require California residents with more than $1 billion in wealth to pay a one-time tax equal to 5 percent of their assets, which can be paid in installments over five years.
Proponents of the wealth tax, which want to use the revenue to offset health care cuts approved by Congress under the Trump administration's proposal, still need to collect enough signatures to put the initiative on the ballot in November 2026.
The USA will then organize the so-called midterm elections for the Congress, and the various constituent states of the USA often take advantage of such elections to organize, in parallel, at the local level, referendums on various proposed measures.
Under California law, residency is determined by the nature of a person's ties to the state, taking into account factors such as time spent in the state and maintaining substantial business ties. If the ballot initiative passes in November, it would go into effect retroactively for residents who lived in California on Jan. 1, 2026 — hence Page's rush to move his businesses out of California.
The proposal has sparked a wave of backlash from California businesspeople, with founders of startups and tech companies fondly complaining that they will be disproportionately affected. That's because they would be taxed based on the valuation of their companies, which is often hundreds of times higher than the cash or other more liquid assets they hold.
Essentially, the tech billionaires are saying that if the tax proposal is approved, they will have to sell stakes in their companies to pay the tax.
How much is Larry Page's net worth?
Like Sergey Brin, the other co-founder of Google, Page is considered a low-key presence compared to other well-known Silicon Valley billionaires such as Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg or even Bill Gates. Brin and Page rarely express political or other opinions in public, and most of their participation in public events is limited to appearances at tech conferences.
Page and Brin led Google until 2019, when they stepped down from executive roles and handed over the CEO position to Sundar Pichai, the company's current head.
The fortunes of both Google founders rose spectacularly last year amid sustained appreciation in the tech giant's stock price.
Thus, Brin's wealth is currently valued by Bloomberg at $251 billion, making him the fourth richest man in the world. Page, with a fortune of 270 billion dollars, even climbed to the second position in the ranking of the ultra-rich on the planet, behind only Elon Musk (630 billion). On the third position in the ranking, between Page and Brin, is the founder of Amazon Jeff Bezos, with a fortune of 262 billion dollars.
The top 10 ranking is dominated by other tech billionaires like Larry Ellison ($246 billion), Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg ($233 billion), former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer ($167 billion) and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang ($155 billion).
Basically, only two names in the ranking of the 10 richest people in the world are not billionaires who made their fortunes in the US technology sector: Bernard Arnault, the founder and CEO of the luxury conglomerate LVMH (207 billion) and the legendary investor Warren Buffett (150 billion), who retired earlier this year from the head of his company Berkshire Hathaway.
