Google cofounder Sergey Brin has made his largest single public donation yet to address California’s housing crisis, just weeks after making a $42 million mansion on the Nevada side of Lake Tahoe his primary residence, according to new filings and property records. The move illustrates how one of the world’s richest men is trying to shape the future of a state he is increasingly distancing himself from physically and, potentially, for tax purposes, as questions swirl over how many California billionaires might leave the state with a ballot initiative in the balance, targeting 1% of their wealth.
Brin has committed $20 million to a new organization called Building a Better California, a political and policy effort aimed squarely at California’s worsening housing affordability problems, recent state disclosures show, as first reported by the New York Times. The money is part of a broader $35 million launch package that includes $15 million from eight other wealthy business leaders, among them former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and venture capitalist Michael Moritz, who each contributed $2 million. Roughly a week earlier, another Silicon Valley billionaire, Peter Thiel, made his largest political donation in years, contributing $3 million to a California business group leading the fight against a proposed billionaire wealth tax.
Brin’s contribution stands out even in his rapidly expanding philanthropic and political spending, and was described to the Times by people familiar with his giving as his most visible single cash commitment to housing affordability in the state. Building a Better California is expected to back statewide ballot measures and legislation that would boost housing construction and streamline approvals, positioning Brin as a major player in one of California’s most contentious policy fights. One person familiar with Brin’s thinking told the Times that Brin has been considering potential reforms to tackle California’s economic and budget issues since last year, when the wealth tax effort was not on the radar.
Moving out as money moves in
The surge in Brin’s political giving comes just weeks after he was linked to the purchase of Crystal Pointe, a sprawling lakefront estate on the Nevada side of Lake Tahoe that sold for $42 million. Bloomberg reported on public records and LLC paperwork that suggest the buyer is tied to Brin, and part of a broader effort to move assets and residency out of California.
The Lake Tahoe property, once marketed as one of the region’s most expensive listings, features multiple structures on five acres, direct lake access, and two glass funiculars running down the hillside to the water.
The Times previously reported on Brin and his fellow Google cofounder cutting their ties to California in myriad other ways. In the 10 days before Christmas, for instance, an entity connected to Brin terminated or moved 15 California limited liability companies, according to documents seen by the Times. Seven of those were converted into Nevada entities.
Page, meanwhile, has followed a more Bezos-ian playbook by decamping to Miami, dropping about $173 million on two ultra-luxury waterfront mansions in Miami’s posh Coconut Grove neighborhood. Regulatory filings show that Page also moved his family office and several investment and holding entities out of California, Business Insider reported, reincorporating in Delaware and listing new business addresses in Florida.
The $20 million housing gift comes amid a rapid expansion of Brin’s overall giving, driven by large transfers of Alphabet stock to philanthropic vehicles over the past two years. A recent analysis found that Brin’s grantmaking surged past that of several legacy foundations, with his vehicles disbursing roughly $1.1 billion in 2025 alone, solidifying his status as one of America’s most active big-money donors. His Catalyst4 nonprofit and family foundation has funds earmarked for areas such as health, climate, and scientific research.
Housing crisis backdrop
California’s housing crisis has become a defining challenge for the state, with high rents, soaring home prices, and persistent homelessness fueling voter anger and anti-NIMBY activism. Cities across the Bay Area as well as Los Angeles have struggled to approve and build enough units to keep pace with job growth, while local resistance and complex financing rules have slowed affordable housing projects. And Los Angeles and San Francisco joined Miami and New York on UBS Global Wealth Management’s most recent Real Estate Bubble Index as cities with some of the most out-of-control housing prices globally.
One person seems to agree with Brin on housing: an architect of the wealth tax who seems to be pushing Brin to leave the state. Fortune recently spoke with Brian Galle, a UC Berkeley law professor, leading wealth tax expert, and one of the designers of the billionaires tax ballot proposal. He’s also a recent transplant to the Bay Area, after a decade teaching at Georgetown in Washington, D.C., and having grown up in the New York City area. “I think one of the things I find the most puzzling [about California] is their housing policy,” he told Fortune, adding that he thinks California “could embrace newcomers much more enthusiastically,” but that there’s far too little available housing.
“I won’t tell you about my housing search, but it was agonizing,” Galle said. “And I’m sure that’s true for everybody.” He said the famously car-centric sprawling state seems to have other issues, too, with counterproductive urban planning choices. The local BART stations in Berkeley and Oakland, for example, aren’t surrounded by dense development. “You look around, and there’s an empty parking lot with a tumbleweed rolling through it. And you’re like, what are we doing? [In] Washington, D.C., this whole place would be covered in condos and retail, and it seems like California never got the message of how to build on the infrastructure that you’ve sunk billions of dollars into.”
Although Galle stressed that he’s a lawyer and not an economist by training, he thinks economics can be helpful here. “There’s a lot of recent evidence that it turns out that building more housing is actually good for people who are incumbent owners, by and large. Like everyone assumes, ‘Well, if I let more housing be built, then that’s gonna make my house less valuable.’ But it turns out actually having more people loving your neighborhood kind of means there are more people who love your neighborhood and want to live there.”
The new California housing push extends Brin’s influence into overtly political terrain, where deep-pocketed donors are increasingly underwriting campaigns that seek to rewire how and where the state builds homes. For California, Brin’s latest move captures an emerging paradox: Even as billionaire founders relocate their wealth and residences to lower-tax states, their money is flowing back into battles over how the Golden State will house its workers and share the costs of its prosperity.
