Billionaire and Uber co-founder Travis Kalanick officially joined the California exodus, revealing he had moved to Austin, Texas, just weeks before a proposed wealth tax could have targeted his estimated $3.6 billion fortune.
“Just to be clear, I moved to Texas on December 18th. I don’t know what’s so specific about December 18th, but let’s just say it’s before January,” Kalanick said in an interview with TPBN.
‘I kinda get it [of] FOMO, these people are going to Florida. I’m like, dude! Why so much action in Florida?’ he continued. “Come on, friends.”
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Kalanick left his home in San Francisco for Texas just a fortnight before the new year, when the retroactive residency deadline for the proposed billionaires tax would go into effect.
Travis Kalanick, founder and former CEO of Uber Inc., stands on the trading floor during the company’s initial public offering (IPO) on the New York Stock Exchange on May 10, 2019. (Getty Images)
Although it has not yet qualified for the November ballot, the proposal – backed by the Service Employees International Union – United Healthcare Workers West (SEIU-UHW) – would a one-off tax of 5% on the net worth of California residents with more than $1 billion in wealth. The tax would be due in 2027 and taxpayers could spread the payments over five years, with additional costs, according to the California Legislative Analyst’s Office.
If the measure is approved by voters, anyone who was a California resident on Jan. 1, 2026, would be liable for the tax, according to the proposal. Based on Forbes’ estimates, Kalanick could owe around $180 million.
Kalanick’s departure follows other longtime California billionaires who have moved themselves or their companies to Texas in recent years, including Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale and venture capitalist David Sacks.
Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson predicts that major corporations will stop working in the Big Apple on “Maria Bartiromo’s Wall Street.”
Florida too rapidly absorbing California’s financial and media elite, with names like Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, venture capitalist Peter Thiel, Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg moving to the ‘Gold Coast’.
Kalanick is using his move to launch his new venture Atoms — formerly City Storage Systems — which focuses on industrial robotics and “paid” artificial intelligence, he said in the interview. It is a pivot in the “perception politics” that he says pushed him out of Uber in 2017.
“I had been torn away from an idea and a movement that I had poured my life into. I had lost my way when I noticed that the world was increasingly functioning according to the rules of perception, and not according to reality,” he writes on the Atoms website.
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When jokingly asked if he ever takes work calls on his AirPods while water skiing, Kalanick said he might.
“Dude, I should. I would love it. Don’t get me excited,’ he said.
