Some of California's wealthiest tech figures were coordinating their opposition to a proposed state wealth tax through a private Signal group chat, according to reporting by Emily Shugerman in The San Francisco Standard.
The chat included prominent names such as Google co-founder Sergey Brin, venture capital titan Marc Andreessen, and Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan, along with other tech elites. According to the Standard, the group was trading strategies on how to fight back against the proposed tax as early as the fall of 2025.
The existence of the chat pulls back the curtain on how billionaires in Silicon Valley quietly organize political opposition — not through public statements or lobbying firms alone, but through encrypted messaging apps that leave no public paper trail. Signal, designed for private and secure communication, gives participants the ability to coordinate without the kind of transparency that formal political organizing typically requires.
California has long been a target for wealth tax proposals given that it is home to a disproportionate share of American billionaires, many of them in the tech industry. Such taxes, which assess levies on total assets rather than just income, have faced fierce resistance from the wealthy, who argue they are difficult to administer and could push high-net-worth individuals to leave the state.
The story matters because it illustrates how enormous economic and political power can be wielded in the shadows, with some of the world's richest people shaping public policy debates through private channels that ordinary citizens — and even most journalists — never see.