Gavin Newsom stood cold and hungry in a treehouse while the co-founder of Google told him California had lost him.
Newsom has been complaining about that conversation ever since – including about the cold he claims the couple gave him.
What Google's Sergey Brin did next is why Sacramento's union machine is now in full panic mode.
Sergey Brin Confronted Gavin Newsom Over California Billionaire Tax and Launched a War
It was a Christmas party at the San Francisco home of crypto mogul Chris Larsen – live entertainment, glowing red eyes on a towering animatronic snowman, Silicon Valley royalty packed into a redwood treehouse north of the city.
Late in the evening, Brin and his girlfriend Gerelyn Gilbert-Soto pulled Newsom aside and delivered the news: they were done with California.
Newsom, who privately opposes the union-backed billionaire wealth tax himself, walked away from that party still talking about it months later.
Brin, meanwhile, acted.
He moved to a $42 million estate on the Nevada side of Lake Tahoe, terminated or relocated 15 California limited liability companies out of the state, and poured $57 million into Building a Better California – a political operation built to kill the tax and back pro-business candidates in the governor's race.
He also organized a Signal group chat among Silicon Valley elites, floating the idea of raising hundreds of millions of dollars to reshape Sacramento politics entirely.
Brin's Father Lost His Career to the Soviet State and Now California Wants the Son's Fortune
Brin issued a rare public statement this week.
"I fled socialism with my family in 1979 and know the devastating, oppressive society it created in the Soviet Union," Brin said. "I don't want California to end up in the same place."
Brin's father was a mathematician in Moscow – barred from professional advancement because the Communist Party systematically excluded Jewish families from upper academic and professional ranks.
The family applied for exit visas in 1978 and his father was fired on the spot for asking.
They spent eight months without steady income, waiting to find out whether a government that held their fate completely would grant them permission to leave.
They were among the last Jewish families permitted to exit before the Kremlin shut that door entirely.
Brin arrived in America at age six, built Google in a rented garage, and created one of the largest fortunes in human history.
Now California's government-union machine wants five percent of it – applied retroactively to anyone who was a resident as of January 1 of this year.
Constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley put it plainly: the tax is a penalty on people who stayed in California too long.
There is no legal escape by leaving now.
California Wealth Tax Mirrors the Wealth Taxes Europe Already Tried and Abandoned
Newsom knows what wealth taxes do – because the rest of the world already ran this experiment.
Fourteen countries adopted broad wealth taxes between the 1960s and 2010s.
Most repealed them after capital flight gutted revenue projections and administrative costs became impossible to justify.
France's version drove an estimated 42,000 millionaires out of the country between 2000 and 2012, before Paris finally scrapped it.
Norway watched ultra-wealthy residents leave in a surge after modestly raising its own wealth tax in 2022.
California is watching the same preview play out in real time.
Larry Page left. Peter Thiel left. Tech investor Steve Jurvetson dropped $171 million on Nevada lakefront properties – a $125 million record-setting estate in Incline Village and a second property for $46 million – both purchased within months of each other in early 2026.
The top one percent of California taxpayers supply nearly half of all state income tax collections, and those taxpayers are watching what happens next very carefully.
Brin donated to Obama's reelection in 2012, gave $30,800 to the Democrat National Committee, and called Trump's 2016 election "deeply offensive" in comments to Google employees.
Democrats had him right where they wanted him.
Then they got greedy.
Brin is not the first person to tell Gavin Newsom that his state is becoming unlivable for the people who built it.
He is just the first one to do it to Newsom's face, in a treehouse – and then spend $57 million proving he meant every word.
The Soviet government thought it could hold onto the people it needed by making it too costly to leave.
The Brins found a way out anyway.
Democrats are learning a hard lesson that they can push too hard and lose formerly loyal supporters.
Sources:
- Teddy Schleifer, "Sergey Brin Confronted Gavin Newsom at a Treehouse Party – Then Launched a Political War," Fortune, April 26, 2026.
- "Sergey Brin Compares California Billionaire Tax to Soviet Socialism," Fox Business, April 27, 2026.
- Jay Rogers, "California's Proposed 2026 Billionaire Tax Act: A Fast Track to Economic Exodus in the Golden State," California Globe, February 23, 2026.
- "California's Wealth Creators Flee to Nevada as Proposed Billionaire Tax Sparks Exodus," California Globe, April 2026.
- Dan Walters, "Billionaires Bolt from Blue States Amid Tax Fears," CalMatters, March 17, 2026.
- "Lake Tahoe Estate Sells for Record $125 Million to SpaceX Backer," Bloomberg, March 27, 2026.
