Voters in Silicon Valley rejected the billionaire wealth tax while those in Los Angeles and San Francisco—home to the two top AI companies—wanted it

From the source

California is still counting the votes for the 2026 election, but the controversial billionaire wealth tax looks headed for defeat—with help from Silicon Valley. Statewide, the “no” side for Proposition 40 is getting 55% of the vote versus 45% voting “yes.” That split exactly matches how it played out in Santa Clara County, home to tech strongholds like Sunnyvale, Palo Alto, Cupertino, and Mountain View. The wealthy Bay Area enclave of Marin County, which sits just north of San Francisco, also came out against Prop 40 as did San Mateo County, which is just south of the city. By contrast, 55% of San Francisco County voters were in favor of Prop 40 and 45% were against. That’s despite being home to top AI startups OpenAI and Anthropic, which are planning to go public soon and will create new millionaires—and billionaires. Of course, plenty of employees and early investors in the AI giants live outside San Francisco and likely voted according to their pocketbooks as Prop 40 sought a…

BestAIBroker analysis

• Finance-aware sentiment: neutral (+0.00 on a -1 to +1 scale).
• Event classification: OTHER.
• Market importance score: 35/100, weighting entity relevance, source credibility, multi-outlet coverage and recency.