For most of this 2026 midterm election cycle, the attention around California’s billionaire class has focused heavily on their opposition to a one-time tax on their wealth, money that would be used to help offset massive federal cuts to safety-net health care programs in the state.
That’s fine as far as it goes, but it goes nowhere near far enough. In truth, the billionaires are on an all-time spending spree when it comes to politics at both the state and federal levels — and their interests range far afield from simply defeating a single proposition, no matter how irksome the Billionaire Tax Act is to them.
California’s mega-wealthy are also using their resources to pave the way for them to expand their futures in the cryptocurrency and AI industries with as little regulation or pushback as possible.
“It’s not just putting money into the [billionaire tax] ballot measure. There is a very precise legislative agenda here as well,” said Crystal Zermeno of California Common Good, a coalition of labor and community groups that has been researching this energized round of spending.
That agenda, Zermeno said, extends to state-level elections, where billionaire money is being used to support either Republican or, in Democrat-safe districts, pro-business Democratic candidates — and in some cases, to directly oppose labor-backed candidates in those elections.
The amounts involved are staggering. According to a report released today by California Common Good and the pro-working class organization People Over Billionaires, the state’s top 15 billionaires alone have poured more than $336 million into federal and California elections so far this year.
Just four billionaires — Google co-founder Sergey Brin, Silicon Valley venture capitalists Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, and cryptocurrency magnate Chris Larsen — have given $331 million to political campaigns, either through individual or affiliated corporate contributions in 2026, the report says.
“It’s an explosion of growth in their spending,” Zermeno said. “They’re driving up the cost of these legislative races immensely. And they’re playing the system toward a corporate agenda.”
The groups’ report draws from broadly available sources, including the federal Securities and Exchange Commission, the California Secretary of State’s office and city ethics commissions that require political contribution disclosures. The bottom line: After years of dipping their toes in the water, billionaires are now fully engaged politically on their own behalf, both in California and federally.
To be sure, the billionaire tax proposal in California, versions of which have consistently failed at the federal level, has their full attention.
Brin, whose political spending was almost nonexistent previously, has personally contributed $86 million in this election cycle, and $85 million of that went to one group. That group, Building a Better California, has launched two initiatives that, if approved by voters, would effectively gut the wealth tax. (The group has not taken a position on the tax proposal itself.)
“I fled socialism with my family in 1979 and know the devastating, oppressive society it created in the Soviet Union. I don’t want California to end up in the same place,” Brin, who rarely comments publicly, said in a statement to the New York Times in April, as the Times prepared a report describing Brin’s recent rightward lurch politically.
Brin himself may not be touched by the California Billionaire Tax Act if it passes. He bought property in Nevada and established residency there near the end of 2025, and only those billionaires with primary residence in California as of Jan. 1, 2026, would be affected by the tax.
Still, Brin, who holds other properties, including a $50 million Malibu estate, continues to use his money to fight the tax. Several other billionaires, including Larsen, former Sequoia Capital chair Michael Moritz, Google director John Doerr III and Stripe CEO Patrick Collison, have given to Building a Better California.
That fight, and the threatened flight of the state’s mega-wealthy if the tax passes, have garnered national attention. But the billionaires’ political spending is also heavily focused on their futures in AI and crypto.
Headquartered in Silicon Valley’s Menlo Park, Andreessen Horowitz is considered the most heavily invested venture capital firm in the country when it comes to AI and crypto. It’s pouring money into federal Political Action Committees that align with those financial interests.
Both Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz have contributed individually — $41 million and $45 million, respectively — but so has their firm. Andreessen Horowitz has spent $57 million as a corporation on political giving in 2026, all of it at the federal level, according to the newly released report.
A primary recipient: Fairshake, the powerful super-PAC that uses its clout to influence federal legislation and elections — including this year’s midterms — when it comes to beating back cryptocurrency rules and regulations. Another recipient is the political action committee Leading the Future, a pro-AI industry organization; Andreessen has argued for years that AI should be allowed to be developed without any government regulations or assistance whatsoever.
And the billionaires’ money is landing on local races in California, often specifically to get a pro-business candidate elected or prevent a pro-labor candidate from doing so.
One political action committee, Grow California, was seeded with money from crypto giants Larsen and Tim Draper. Larsen, a longtime Democratic donor, has spoken openly of using the PAC to push back against labor unions that he believes hold too much power in California. The proposed billionaire tax, which Larsen also opposes, has been pushed by the state’s largest health care union.
Grow California spent money on multiple primary elections in the state this year, often specifically opposing labor-backed candidates, the report found. In Assembly District 67, the PAC used independent expenditures to support one Democratic candidate, Mark Pulido, and oppose another, Ada Briceño, co-president of the labor union UNITE HERE Local 11. Pulido, not Briceño, moved on to November’s general election. (Disclosure: UNITE HERE is a financial supporter of Capital & Main.)
“We found that in races where they get involved big, the billionaires are outspending … the labor and community group [candidates] by four times, six times,” Zermeno said.
Absent election finance reform, this is a pattern that will recur. California’s billionaire class, much of it the product of the state’s thriving tech sector, is working fully within current campaign finance guidelines by giving individually and through PACs, which they are also free to create and fund.
With an early attempt at the federal level to prevent states from regulating AI having failed, tech companies may well see state legislation as their path to a less regulated future. The same goes for crypto. And that suggests that California’s billionaire class will continue this cycle’s attempt to get pro-business, tech-friendly or anti-labor candidates elected, using amounts of money previously unheard of in local district campaigns.
“This has been an exponentially different level of uptick in their spending,” Zermeno said. It may be only the beginning.
