Tech billionaires are flooding California politics with unprecedented sums ahead of the June primary, orchestrating what amounts to a coordinated assault on the state's regulatory future. The spending spans gubernatorial races, state legislature contests, local primaries, and ballot measures, creating what experts describe as only the visible portion of a far larger influence operation.
Campaign finance filings reveal the scale of the push. Google co-founder Sergey Brin alone has deployed $66 million since January to block a proposed billionaire tax scheduled for November, far exceeding any other individual donor. Crypto entrepreneur Chris Larsen has funneled $26 million into three separate Super Pacs targeting races across the state. Google and Meta together committed $10 million to a single Super Pac backing assembly and senate candidates in local districts.
The motivation is explicitly about protecting tech's operating environment. With artificial intelligence development racing forward, the industry views favorable elected officials as essential to avoiding regulatory constraints that could slow growth. "This money is flowing in the direction of politicians that can be influential in defining the regulatory agenda for the next five years," said Francesco Trebbi, a public policy professor at UC Berkeley. "Reinforcing the cycle of economic power produces political power, and political power further establishes economic power."
Voters across California have been inundated with ads, robocalls, and mailers sponsored by tech-funded Pacs. Silicon Valley money targets races at every level, from city council contests to statewide offices, with voter guides suggesting how to vote on local tax measures appearing in neighborhoods from Oakland to Orange County.
Democratic gubernatorial candidate Matt Mahan has emerged as the tech industry's clear favorite. The San Jose mayor and former tech entrepreneur has raised nearly $50 million since announcing his candidacy in late January, more than any other gubernatorial contender except self-funded billionaire Tom Steyer. Mahan's donor list reads like a Silicon Valley roster: executives from Google, Amazon, Meta, Snap, LinkedIn, Reddit, Netflix, Palantir, and dozens of other firms have backed his campaign.
Brin personally contributed the maximum individual donation of $78,400 to Mahan and added $1 million to a Super Pac supporting him. The billionaire even agreed to meet with Mahan at his Lake Tahoe residence in March, according to reports. Despite this deep-pocketed backing, Mahan's campaign has stalled, polling at just 4 percent of likely voters, and the Brin-funded Super Pac backing him shut down last month.
The tech industry's embrace of Mahan has sparked pushback from California Democrats. State assembly members from his district have publicly accused him of being "handpicked" by the tech industry. Lorena Gonzalez Fletcher, president of the California Labor Federation, said she refuses to support Mahan, calling him the only Democrat not on her endorsement list because she opposes "the candidate funded by Trump's big tech billionaires."
Beyond the governor's race, tech money has scattered across state and local contests with surgical precision. Chris Larsen's Super Pacs have targeted specific races, including a $1 million injection into the state insurance commissioner primary to back Democrat Ben Allen against Bernie Sanders-endorsed Jane Kim. Larsen's Grow California Super Pac has seeded roughly a dozen state assembly and senate races with hundreds of thousands of dollars per candidate, concentrating on open seats rather than challenging incumbents.
John Bennett, director of the California Initiative for Technology and Democracy, notes the strategy suggests a long game. "They've been hyper-focused on those open seats, not going after incumbents this time around," he said. "It seems like they're doing a long-term strategy to slowly turn the legislature to become more friendly to them."
The disclosed spending represents only a fraction of tech's influence campaign. Trebbi cautioned that sophisticated political operators use both visible donations and untraceable dark money vehicles. "This money is flowing in the direction of politicians that can be influential in defining the regulatory agenda for the next five years," he said. "What we're seeing now is just the tip of the iceberg."
Beyond campaign spending, tech companies are pouring record sums into lobbying. In 2025 alone, the tech industry paid $39 million to lobby California state government, outpacing oil and gas for the first time and exceeding spending in any prior year. Major tech and AI firms collectively spent $109 million on federal lobbying in 2025, meaning California accounts for 36 percent of their national legislative spending.
Author James Rodriguez: "This isn't subtle anymore. Silicon Valley is betting that money can rewrite California's political DNA before regulators figure out how to govern AI."
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