The SF Standard identified the Silicon Valley names inside a fall 2025 Signal chat plotting to kill California's proposed 5% wealth tax. The group included Brin, Andreessen, Stripe's Patrick Collison, Coinbase's Brian Armstrong, and dozens more. The union behind the measure gathered nearly double the required signatures regardless, and the billionaires' best remaining option is Newsom.

The San Francisco Standard on Friday named the Silicon Valley names behind a private Signal group chat that spent the fall of 2025 plotting strategy against California's proposed 5% wealth tax — and the reporting reveals something beyond the roster: despite the coordination of some of the richest people in the country, SEIU gathered nearly double the required signatures to put the measure on the November ballot, and the tech elites' best remaining option is now the governor they were criticizing.

According to the Standard's Emily Shugerman, the chat included Google co-founder Sergey Brin, Stripe CEO Patrick Collison, Marc Andreessen, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan, PayPal co-founder Max Levchin, Ripple co-founder Chris Larsen, Sequoia partner Shaun Maguire, former Sequoia head Michael Moritz, Future Ventures founder Steve Jurvetson, investor David Friedberg, and Ron Conway — "dozens" of participants in total, per two sources who described its contents. "It's kind of like, 'Who wasn't in it?' to be honest," one told the outlet.

The public documentary record gives us one clean data point from all of this: Conway donated $100,000 in November to Stop the Squeeze — a political committee run by two of Gov. Gavin Newsom's advisers — per California campaign finance filings. The private conversation around it was reportedly more audacious: one proposal floated in the chat was to acquire the signature-collection firm SEIU was using, then prohibit it from taking on new contracts. The acquisition didn't happen. "That's what you would do in business: If there's an impediment, just buy it," a source who saw the messages told the Standard.

The Billionaire Tax Act — crafted by SEIU United Healthcare Workers West to replace healthcare funding cut under the Trump administration — would impose a 5% annual levy on the net worth of California's roughly 200 billionaires. The chat itself fractured before any of this resolved: it disbanded in January and members moved to smaller sub-groups. Conway, who had sent a message urging the group not to attack Newsom, wasn't invited to those.

The June 25 ratification deadline is the operative clock now. Newsom is actively trying to negotiate SEIU into pulling the measure before it locks onto the ballot — which makes the governor, not eight months of encrypted strategy sessions, the billionaires' actual leverage point. Republican consultant Marty Wilson told the Standard: "This was a catalyst to bring a lot of tech money into the state political system that otherwise had largely been on the sidelines."

That much is probably accurate. Whether the awakening translates to a win or an expensive lesson in what money can't buy gets settled in the next 12 days.