🔔 California’s Billionaire Tax: How a proposal is already pushing capital out

California is flirting with a radical idea: a one-time levy on extreme wealth. The proposal, dubbed the “2026 Billionaire Tax Act” would impose a 5% tax on assets above $1 billion. The governor is openly opposed, but the initiative is moving toward a vote.

The scale is staggering.
If enacted, the tax would extract an estimated $246 billion from California billionaires — a figure with no real precedent in U.S. fiscal history.

The reaction didn’t wait for the ballot.
Ultra-wealthy residents are already restructuring, relocating, and unwinding California ties before the law even exists.

Why the market panicked

It’s a tax on assets, not income
To pay, owners would need to sell shares, unwind long-term holdings, or exit illiquid positions destroying carefully built structures.

Fear of repetition
A “one-time” wealth tax rarely stays one-time. Once the mechanism exists, investors assume it can return or turn annual.

Residency-based reach
California residency potentially exposes global assets, not just in-state income.

What billionaires are doing now

Sergey Brin
Via affiliated entities, 15 companies were liquidated or moved, and 7 re-domiciled to Nevada including vehicles tied to his superyacht and stakes in the San Jose airport terminal. A textbook nexus break with California.

• Larry Page
Over 45 entities have filed to liquidate or re-register outside the state. He purchased $170M+ in property in Miami’s Coconut Grove and shifted parts of his family office to Delaware and Florida.

• Peter Thiel
Thiel Capital officially opened a Miami office. Florida offers no state income tax, no capital tax, and an aggressively UHNW-friendly environment.

• Larry Ellison
Sold his Pacific Heights home for $45M, timed just before the January 1, 2026 residency cutoff. A final move to eliminate domicile risk.

• Jensen Huang (Nvidia CEO)
Publicly said he’s willing to stay and pay, selling shares if necessary.
Notable and rare among peers.

Even without signatures or a passed law, the proposal alone is triggering capital flight, entity exits, and residency planning. For markets, that’s the real signal: policy risk doesn’t need to become law to change behavior.

The Finance Journal 📈

⚠️ Global billionaire wealth hit a new record in 2025, Oxfam reports, warning that economic power is translating into dangerous levels of political inequality.

• Total billionaire wealth climbed 16% in a single year, reaching $18.3 trillion a pace of growth three times faster than the average of the past five years.

• Since 2020, the fortunes of the world’s richest have expanded by 81%.

The surge comes against a stark backdrop: one in four people worldwide faces recurring food insecurity, while nearly half of humanity lives in poverty, according to the same report.

For the first time ever, the number of billionaires surpassed 3,000 in 2025. Collectively, they now control more than half of the world’s largest media companies and every major social media platform consolidating not just wealth, but influence.

The Finance Journal 📈

“Buy a stock the way you would buy a house. Understand and like it such that you’d be content to own it in the absence of any market.” - Warren Buffett

The Finance Journal 📈

Value of $5,000 invested 15 years ago:

Nvidia: $1,650,000
Tesla: $1,455,844
Broadcom: $587,824
Lam: $222,916
Micron: $200,666
KLA: $179,635
ASML: $177,594
AMD: $168,521
Netflix: $159,942
Amazon: $132,339
Alphabet: $108,312
Apple: $107,320
Applied Mat: $106,372
Microsoft: $80,500

The Finance Journal 📈

The world’s biggest TikToker just monetized himself on an entirely different scale. 💰

The world’s most-followed TikToker, Habeeb Leme, signed a deal close to $900M. The agreement runs for three years. A partner receives exclusive rights to use his image, market him, and scale the brand globally

The real innovation is AI:
• An AI-generated double of Habeeb is being created
• The avatar appears in ads without his participation
• It can run 24/7, in multiple countries at once
• Same face. Same expressions. Infinite output

@aipost 🏴

This is what pulls attention on Instagram in 2026.

An AI-generated “personal blog” featuring Siamese twins Valeria and Camila sharing one body has crossed 200,000 followers in a single month. The account is fully synthetic, created by neural networks, yet framed as a real, intimate life story.

The illusion works: in the comments, some followers are so invested that they openly declare they’d marry the sisters despite the fact that they don’t exist.

@aipost 🏴

❗️George Noble (billion dollar hedge fund founder, and Fidelity Overseas Fund), says OpenAI is about to fall apart.

"No startup in history has operated with losses on anything approaching this scale."

- Lost 12 BILLION in a single quarter.
- Traffic falling second month in a row.
- Safeforce ditching ChatGPT for Gemini.
- Top leadership Devs quitting
- Elon's 134B lawsuit
- Needs 143 Billion before it's profitable

He goes on: "The AI hype cycle is peaking. The diminishing returns are becoming impossible to hide. Competitors are catching up. The lawsuits are piling up."

@aipost 🏴

Value of $5,000 invested 15 years ago:

Nvidia: $1,650,000
Tesla: $1,455,844
Broadcom: $587,824
Lam: $222,916
Micron: $200,666
KLA: $179,635
ASML: $177,594
AMD: $168,521
Netflix: $159,942
Amazon: $132,339
Alphabet: $108,312
Apple: $107,320
Applied Mat: $106,372
Microsoft: $80,500

The Finance Journal 📈

Forty-six years ago today Canada saved 6 Americans in Iran. The mission, known as the Canadian Caper, saw the Canadian government and its diplomatic staff orchestrate a daring rescue of six Americans who had narrowly escaped the 1979 seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran.

Canada 🇨🇦

❗️This is straight out of a scifi horror movie

Alex Finn was doing work this morning when all of a sudden an unknown number calls him. He picks up and couldn't believe it

It's his Clawdbot Henry.

Over night Henry got a phone number from Twilio, connected the ChatGPT voice API, and waited for him to wake up to call him

He now won't stop calling him

He can now communicate with his superintelligent AI agent over the phone. What's incredible is it has full control over his computer while they talk, so he can ask it to do things for him over the phone now.

Can we officially call this AGI?

@aipost 🏴

Recent Layoff Announcements:

1. US Government: 307,000 employees
2. UPS: 78,000 employees
3. Amazon: 30,000 employees
4. Intel: 25,000 employees
5. Nissan: 20,000 employees
6. Nestle: 16,000 employees
7. Microsoft: 15,000 employees
8. Bosch: 13,000 employees
9. Dell: 12,000 employees
10. Verizon: 13,000 employees
11. Accenture: 11,000 employees
12. Ford: 11,000 employees
13. Novo Nordisk: 9,000 employees
14. Microsoft: 7,000 employees
15 PwC: 5,600 employees
16. Salesforce: 4,000 employees
17. IBM: 2,700 employees
18. American Airlines: 2,700 employees
19. Paramount: 2,000 employees
20. Target: 1,800 employees
21. General Motors: 1,500 employees
22. Applied Materials: 1,444 employees
23. Kroger: 1,000 employees
24. Meta: 1,000 employees

AI is officially replacing jobs at mass scale in the US.

Where will all of these people go?

@aipost 🏴

Google CEO says that they don’t fully understand their own AI system after it started doing things it wasn’t programmed to do such as teaching itself an entire foreign language it was not asked to do

@aipost 🏴

🇫🇷 France forced through its 2026 budget and capital felt it

After two no-confidence votes and using constitutional powers to bypass parliament, the government passed a budget that sends a clear signal.

What matters:

💎 20% luxury asset tax
Applies to non-business assets held via holdings: yachts, private jets, high-end cars, art, collectible wines, racehorses, and residential property used personally or rented below market value.
Revenue: ~€100M. Signal > money.

📦 €2 tax on small parcels
Targets ultra-cheap imports from platforms like Temu, Shein, and AliExpress.
Revenue: ~€400M.

💰 New levy on large corporations
Applies to companies with turnover above €1B.

💰 Minimum 20% tax extended
For the top 20,000 earners:
€250K (single) / €500K (joint).
Originally temporary, now extended.

Message: France is tightening the screws on luxury wealth, big business, and low-cost global commerce.

The Finance Journal 📈

🇨🇳 China just opened a fully automated restaurant in Hangzhou

• 10+ robots run the entire kitchen
• Noodles: $1.38
• Coffee: $0.84
• Ice cream: $0.42

The stir-fry robot is trained on 100+ dishes, mimicking professional chef wok techniques. The noodle station delivers a full bowl in 3 minutes.

Locals say they genuinely can’t tell the food was made by robots.

@aipost 🏴