Billionaires (and their corporations) do not make for good neighbors. While they claim to bring prosperity for everyone, their primary concern is to capture our local governments and take whatever they can get from our communities in land, labor, and resources – all for their private profit. The result? Billionaires have become exponentially richer as the rest of us live with a growing affordability crisis. This series is about the impact billionaires have on our everyday lives when they move into our backyards.
The fabulously wealthy are flocking to Florida. The number of billionaires in the state has tripled since 2015. Ultra-luxury home sales there are at an all time high. Several Wall Street and tech corporations have publicly announced new offices or moved their headquarters to Miami in recent years. But while the ultra-conservative state government has rolled out the red carpet for incoming billionaires by cutting corporate taxes and stripping away union rights, working class families in Florida face an ever-increasing cost of living.
In the first installment of this series on Florida’s new billionaire residents, LittleSis explained how the state has become a magnet for billionaires seeking low taxes, a pro-corporate political environment, and unprecedented access to political power with President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate next door. Billionaire transplants like Stephen Ross and Ken Griffin, who launched a campaign to attract more ultra-wealthy business owners and financiers to the Sunshine State, claim that the influx of billionaires has made Florida a success story. In reality, Floridians have seen few benefits since their new, ultra-wealthy neighbors moved in. The cost of housing continues to rise, the public education system continues to struggle, and residents face extreme environmental challenges exacerbated by billionaires like Jeff Bezos.
In Part Two of “Billionaires Claim the Sunshine State, Floridians Pay the Price,” we will dig deeper into some of the most influential Wall Street and Tech billionaires that have made their move to Florida recently and highlight the impact they’ve had on working families in Florida.
Stephen Schwarzman, Blackstone
Stephen A. Schwarzman is the co-founder, Chairman, and Chief Executive Officer of Blackstone, one of the world’s largest private equity and asset management firms. He is worth an estimated $45 billion and has owned his estate in Palm Beach on “Billionaires Row” since 2003. In 2020, Blackstone announced that the firm would open a tech office in Miami where it would hire over 200 FinTech workers.
Blackstone executives have claimed that what motivated them to open a tech office in Miami was the talent pool, lifestyle, and proximity to New York. Schwarzman’s move to Palm Beach, however, also aligned with his long-standing financial and political interests. ProPublica has reported that Schwarzman has taken advantage of tax loopholes to avoid millions in Medicare taxes and reduce his estate taxes. Florida’s lack of a personal income tax and pro-corporate political environment allows Schwarzman and his company to continue to avoid paying their fair share in taxes.
Schwarzman’s real estate portfolio in Florida has grown alongside his firm’s holdings. Schwarzman’s Palm Beach estate, reported to be worth nearly $40 million, is located in the same neighborhood as Mar-A-Lago. Schwarzman and Trump are not only neighbors, but longtime friends. Schwarzman was an economic advisor to Trump during his first term as president, and despite some disagreements, the billionaire remains a key supporter and financial backer of Trump. Schwarzman has given nearly $3.5 million to Trump related PACs and is among the many billionaires and corporate leaders financing Trump’s Ballroom project. Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner also attended Schwarzman’s lavish 70th birthday party at his Palm Beach estate in 2017 – a party that was estimated to cost between $7 million and $9 million.
Florida’s Largest Landlord
No state plays a bigger role in Blackstone’s real estate empire than Florida, where 12% of the firm’s U.S. real estate investments are located. According to the 2025 Blackstone Real Estate Income Trust Annual Report, the firm owns 20,396 rental units in Florida, 60 industrial properties, 12 hotel and hospitality properties, 9 retail properties, and 24 self storage facilities. With more than 20,000 rental units in Florida, Blackstone has an immense amount of power and influence over the cost of housing in the state. According to a 2022 Private Equity Stakeholder Project report, following a two-year Covid-related eviction moratorium, Blackstone filed to evict more than 350 households in just a few months. Another report found that a Blackstone subsidiary routinely raised unit rents by double digits after filing to evict a household.
In contrast, when Blackstone announced that the firm was opening a new office in South Florida to serve the firm’s “internal technology needs,” the private equity giant received $650,000 in tax incentives from Miami-Dade County and $5 million in incentives from the State. While Blackstone received a $5.65 million handout to open a new office, renters in Florida have had to find ways to pay ever increasing rents. Since 2020, the cost of renting a one bedroom apartment for working families in Florida has increased by 27%.
Driving the Data Center Boom
Blackstone acquired QTS, a tech company that operates data centers, in 2021 for $10 billion. Since the acquisition, Blackstone has scaled up QTS to become one of the largest data center corporations in the US and Blackstone’s biggest investment in AI technology – QTS operates 122 out of the 136 data centers owned by Blackstone. On an earnings call in early 2026, Stephen Schwarzman bragged to investors that Blackstone had become the largest investor in AI technology in the world, with a $150 billion data center portfolio and another $160 billion in planned investments.
Florida is not immune to the rapid growth and risks of data center development. The low corporate taxes and growing tech industry have made some corporate leaders confident that data centers can be built quicker and more efficiently in Florida. President and CEO of Florida Power & Light, Scott Bores, told the Miami Herald that “there are a lot of spots in the state of Florida, and we are working with those communities that are really interested and have good locations that’ll be the perfect host for data centers.”
More than many other states, Florida is particularly at risk of being negatively impacted by hyperscale data centers. One report ranked Florida fifth in the nation when it came to state environmental pressures overlapping with the data center build out. This is mostly due to the amount of endangered species and drought risk. Floridians are also vulnerable during the hotter months as the amount of electricity guzzled by large data centers can put a significant strain on the electric grid and risk power outages during a heat wave.
Schwarzman has been active in Palm Beach since before the Covid 19 pandemic. He sits on the board of the Palm Beach Civic Association alongside other billionaires like Stephen Ross and Thomas Peterffy.
Larry Ellison, Oracle
While some billionaires like Stephen Schwarzman fled to Florida during the Covid 19 pandemic, Larry Ellison fled from California to Hawaii, where he lived for nearly three years before changing his permanent residence to Florida. Between 2012 and 2020, Ellison purchased 98% of Lanai, Hawaii’s sixth largest island, for roughly $300 million. The tech billionaire, who founded Oracle, owns housing, resorts, grocery stores, and gas stations, giving him a dangerous level of control over longtime residents’ lives.
Reportedly worth $189 billion, Ellison officially made Florida his permanent residence in 2023. Despite facing criticism for essentially taking over the island of Lanai just a few years ago, Ellison repeated this pattern in a small Florida town of 400 people called Manalapan. Ellison, who is currently the sixth richest person in the world, poured $450 million into real estate investments in Manapalan in 2022 before making it his permanent home. This investment included his ocean-front home as well as the town’s largest property, the Eau Palm Beach Resort & Spa. Much like Schwarzman’s Palm Beach estate, Ellison’s 24-acre estate in Manalapan puts him in close proximity to Trump’s Mar-A-Lago.
His proximity to Trump has coincided with several multi-billion dollar deals that Ellison has negotiated with the president. Ellison’s company Oracle became a key part of the US TikTok deal negotiated by Trump. Oracle was also named as an anchor corporation in Trump’s $500 billion plan to build data centers across the United States. Trump’s administration paved the way for Ellison’s son, David Ellison, to lead the controversial entertainment and media merger between his company Skydance and Paramount. These deals have allowed Ellison to amass another $50 billion in wealth since Trump has taken office for a second time.
Data Centers and Lions
In addition to his real estate investments, Ellison has bought up other assets since moving to Florida. In 2025, he purchased Lion Country Safari in Loxahatchee, Florida, near Palm Beach, for $30 million. The 254-acre drive through animal park had been run by a single family for nearly 60 years. Since Ellison purchased the attraction he has already made changes – like closing the park campground, closing rides and water park features, and ending the ability to purchase annual passes. These changes have led to speculation that Ellison may have bought the park for the land to ultimately develop it into luxury housing or data centers – although park employees deny these claims.
Through this Safari Park and another entity called MPB Property (the LLC Ellison used to purchase the Eau Palm Beach Resort), Ellison gave $50,000 to Palm Beach County Commissioner Sara Baxter, making him her top donor. Baxter had previously been scrutinized for accepting tickets to the College Football championship game from another one of her billionaire donors, Stephen Ross.
Commissioner Baxter had also received (but then returned after mounting pressure) a $10,000 check from PBA Holdings, a developer seeking to build a hyper-scale data center in Loxahatchee, less than two miles from Ellison’s Lion Safari property. Widespread community outcry against the proposed data center project – named Project Tango – led to the Palm Beach County Board of County Commissioners voting 5 to 1 to deny the project. Community members and experts in the Palm Beach area ecosystem feared that the project would damage local wetlands habitats and contaminate drinking water. Although the commission voted down the project, there is potential for the developer to revise and resubmit the proposal.
Ellison’s company Oracle is currently building at least 13 new AI data centers around the United States. This includes a $16 billion project in Michigan financed by fellow Florida billionaires Stephen Ross (via Related Digital) and Stephen Schwarzman (via Blackstone). In June of 2026, Oracle announced that it would plan to spend another $70 billion to build data centers in the coming year.
Thomas Peterffy, Interactive Brokers
Worth an estimated $108 billion, Thomas Peterffy has become one of Florida’s richest transplants. Peterffy was among the first Wall Street traders to automate market making, or provide an automated computer based trading platform for investors. Peterffy laid the technological groundwork for future automated trading firms like billionaire Ken Griffin’s Citadel. He remains the Chairman of the Board of Directors at Interactive Brokers, which manages over $200 billion in assets and is headquartered in Greenwich, Connecticut.
Peterffy first bought property in Florida in 2011 when he purchased a six-acre parcel in Palm Beach for about $23 million. In 2014, two days after Connecticut voters re-elected Democratic Gov. Dan Malloy, Peterffy announced that he would make Florida his permanent residence. In an interview with WealthManagement, Peterffy cited his frustration with Connecticut’s political direction. In contrast, he raved about dinner parties with other wealthy transplants in Palm Beach, where he claimed that attendees would discuss the way forward for the Republican Party in Florida. At the time, Peterffy considered the Florida GOP too unorganized – an issue that needed to be addressed to defeat what he called “the far left of the Democratic party, the socialist Democrats.”
Peterffy positions himself as a leader in American conservative political thought. He gained national attention for financing a widely aired 2012 television advertisement warning that the United States was sliding toward socialism, later releasing a Spanish-language version to reach Latino voters in Florida. Since settling in Florida, he has become a major Republican donor, contributing $670,000 to PACs supporting Governor Ron DeSantis and more than $1.2 million to candidate for Governor, Byron Donalds.
Florida’s Largest Private Land Owner
Peterffy’s influence in Florida extends beyond politics. Peterffy is one of the state’s largest private landowners, owning more than 560,000 acres of land, mostly in Taylor County along the Gulf Coast. Peterffy bought the land in 2015 for $710 million from his friend Howard Leach who was the US Ambassador to France under President George W. Bush. The massive plot of land is believed to be the largest contiguous piece of undeveloped private property in private hands east of the Mississippi River. Much of this land is managed by the company that Peterffy now owns called Four Rivers, a timber company and developer. Along with the business, the land that Peterffy bought came with a long term development plan. The company designated 128,000 acres as industrial and agricultural land along with 31,000 acres of new housing developments. Peterffy’s development plans seem out of alignment with the local community. Taylor County is one of the most rural counties in Florida and residents have expressed their desire to keep it that way. Many locals opposed previous attempts at major developments, particularly after paper company Georgia-Pacific, owned by the billionaire Koch brothers, caused massive industrial waste pollution in the Fenholloway River that impacted groundwater in the region for decades.
Peterffy also owns 32,000 acres of cattle pasture and about half of Blue Head Ranch, a 62,000-acre property in southern Highlands County in south central Florida.
Despite being in the top twenty richest people among the world according to Forbes, Peterffy’s Four Rivers Company filed an appeal of their 2025 Taylor County property taxes in an attempt to avoid paying a few hundred thousand more dollars in taxes to Taylor County where Peterffy owns approximately 57% of the land.
Peter Thiel, Palantir
In February of 2026, the ICE contractor and tech surveillance company Palantir announced that it was relocating its headquarters from Denver to Aventura, Florida. The move came after Peter Thiel, the co-founder and current chairman of Palantir, announced that his investment firm Thiel Capital would open an office in Miami. In the last year, Palantir CEO Alex Karp also started to assemble his own $75 million waterfront compound in Miami Beach.
Thiel, who is worth about $32 billion, first purchased a house in Miami’s Venetian Islands for $18 million in 2020 and officially changed his voter registration to Florida in 2024. In 2025, Thiel Capital announced that it would open an office in Miami’s Wynwood neighborhood. The firm put out a statement saying that the billionaire had been establishing “significant presence in Miami over the last several years.” On Joe Rogan’s podcast in 2024, Thiel was more upfront about his intentions in moving to Miami than most of his fellow billionaire transplants. He called California’s progressive tax structure “confiscatory taxation” – equating taxation with theft. He also told Rogan that he liked “seeing people like [Rogan]” move out of California and hoped that it would pressure the state to cut taxes for the ultra-wealthy.
To solidify his presence in the region, Thiel set a Miami commercial real estate record by leasing a “family office” on the 44th floor of Miami’s 830 Brickell skyscraper. Thiel is paying more for the lease than any other corporation in Miami – reportedly about five times more. The lease will make Thiel neighbors with Ken Griffin’s Citadel, private equity firm Thoma Bravo, and Microsoft. Thiel also reportedly influenced Palantir’s decision to move to Miami.
Palantir offered no official explanation for the relocation, but the move came after years of its executives’ criticizing the political climates of California and Colorado and dozens of protests outside the Palantir offices in Denver. In Palantir’s latest annual report, the company told its shareholders that protests outside of Palantir offices and public criticism “may divert resources and our management’s attention, increase certain operating and other expenses, and further affect our public perception.” In other words, to avoid the distraction of public anger and criticism for their surveillance activities and partnership with ICE, the company needed to flee Denver and move to a location where they would face less public scrutiny.
Powering ICE Detentions
Palantir’s software has become a central tool used by ICE nationwide. Palantir’s Gotham and Investigative Case Management platforms have helped ICE analyze large datasets, identify people, map their social networks, and assist ICE in detaining tens of thousands of people across the US. Palantir’s new home state has been a major site of ICE raids. Second only behind Texas, Florida residents made up 10% of all of ICE arrests between January and October of 2025. More than 20,000 Floridians from over 120 countries of all ages had their lives disrupted by ICE after being surveilled by Palantir software.
Data Centers and the Surveillance State
In addition to Palantir, Thiel has his hands in several other tech companies fueling the growth of artificial intelligence and the demand for data centers in Florida and around the country. Through his venture capital firm Founders Fund, Thiel has investments in data center corporations like Crusoe Energy Systems, Armada, and Akash Systems. While much of the proposed data center buildout has been focused on states like Virginia and Texas, billionaire investments in AI threaten to drive demand for data storage even higher in the coming years. Rapid data center expansion in Florida – like Project Tango – would put significant strain on the state’s electric grid and water systems in a state that already faces major environmental challenges.
Thiel’s Founders Fund also invests in the company Flock Safety – the automatic plate reader system company. The company has been the subject of recent criticism due to privacy concerns and the rising number of cases of police misuse of the data collected by Flock cameras. In Florida, a Haines City Police Officer was accused of misusing the Flock system to track his estranged wife’s car. In a similar case, a detective in the Sumter County Sheriff’s Office misused Flock cameras to track her ex-husband. According to one Flock camera tracker, Florida has the third most Flock cameras out of any state in the country.
Miami Elites and Thiel’s Secret Society
Peter Thiel has emerged as a powerful influence over the Republican Party – particularly when JD Vance was picked to be Trump’s Vice President. Vance was widely seen as Thiel’s protégé and received $15 million from the billionaire during his Senate run. While Thiel has had a complex relationship with Donald Trump – first giving him $1.25 million in 2016 and then publicly refusing to donate to Trump’s campaign in subsequent runs – he also holds significant ties to the Trump family and many other prominent figures in the political and corporate world in South Florida.
In June of 2026, a Switzerland based hacker leaked a list of high profile individuals that were alleged members of a secret society called Dialogue run by Peter Thiel. This list reportedly includes Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of President Trump and fellow South Florida resident. Kushner lives in the so-called Indian Creek “Billionaire Bunker” along with Jeff Bezos, Tom Brady, and Mark Zuckerberg. The Dialogue list also includes the Miami-based Starwood Capital Group Founder Barry Sternlicht, and two former and current executives of Fortress Investment Group, Mike Novogratz and Pete Briger.
As American tech and finance oligarchs become richer and gain more control over all of our lives, they have also become some of the most unpopular figures in the US – bringing people together across the political aisle. A recent Gallup poll found that 7 in 10 Americans from across the political spectrum oppose the construction of data centers. A Harris poll found that over half of Americans considered billionaires a threat to democracy (up 7% from a year prior) and wanted to see a cap on wealth accumulation.
In response to historic cuts to public services under Trump, many states have proposed a tax on the ultra-wealthy as a politically popular solution. Wall Street and big tech billionaires see Florida – and Miami in particular – as a safe haven where they can not only avoid paying more in taxes, but they can live among the ultra-wealthy and escape public protests or criticism of their extreme wealth. Floridians must remain vigilant about local billionaire political influence, land grabs, and attacks on labor rights as billionaires continue moving into their backyard.