Introduction
On New Year’s Day in 2026, venture capitalist and Trump’s AI and Crypto Czar David Sacks, tweeted that “[a]s a response to socialism, Miami will replace NYC as the finance capital and Austin will replace SF as the tech capital.”
Sacks is one of a group of previously California-based Big Tech billionaires who recently relocated to Texas in order to avoid paying income taxes (Texas has no income tax and the 7th most regressive tax structure in the country) and exploit the state’s hands-off regulatory environment. Many of these new arrivals are part of PayPal co-founders Elon Musk and Peter Thiel’s network of friends and proteges. This cadre of billionaire Texas transplants includes Musk himself – whose net worth tops $900 billion as of September 2026 and has reportedly paid just a 3% income tax rate – and they arrived with ambitions of remaking the state’s politics to realize their vision of a society where technology and AI affords luxury and comfort for the ultra-rich, enforced by mass surveillance, violence, and economic exploitation of everybody else.
For his part, Governor Greg Abbott has embraced the influx of billionaires at the expense of working Texans. Abbott has accepted millions of dollars from billionaires, passed billionaire-backed policies such as school voucher legislation, a statewide camping ban, and militarization of the border, and indicated that the state government will do everything in its power to aid billionaires in growing their profits.
Texas has long been among the states with the most billionaires, due in large part to its oil and gas industry. But over the past decade the number of billionaires in the state has skyrocketed, going from 48 in 2015 to 83 in 2025. Billionaires have received massive tax breaks, bought up luxury real estate, and spent millions to shape federal, state, and local elections, driving a worsening cost of living crisis for working class families in Texas. Since 2020, Texans’ electricity bills have risen by 40%. 64% of Texans say they think unions are beneficial for workers, but union density has fallen since the early 1990s due to state electeds implementing “right-to-work” and limiting collective bargaining rights. And Texans are facing dangerous and in some cases life-threatening impacts of extreme heat due to climate change.
In this report, we profile seven big tech billionaires living in Austin, highlighting the impacts of their businesses, political lobbying, and political spending on the lives of everyday Texans.