Billionaires are becoming an even rarer species in California. A proposed one-time 5% tax on their wealth has led several of the state’s wealthiest residents, including Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Google co-founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, to flee to Nevada and Florida. But Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang is doubling down on his commitment to the Golden State.
“I say to everybody, ‘Move to California, don’t leave.’ It’s the highest taxes in the world, but it’s okay,” Huang said in conversation with Congressman Ro Khanna (D-CA) at the Stanford Graduate School of Business last week. He added that the great weather is a bonus. Of course, Huang wasn’t talking to just anyone, but one of the chief exponents of the wealth tax, nationwide and in California.
In March, Khanna and Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-VT) introduced the “Make Billionaires Pay Their Fair Share Act,” a bill that would establish a 5% annual wealth tax on the more than 1,000 U.S.-based billionaires. And in December, Khanna was outspoken about the ballot initiative in California to impose a one-time 5% wealth tax on billionaires in the state. In a widely circulated social media post, he invoked FDR’s famous rebuke of wealthy “royalists” who threatened to leave the country, writing that if Silicon Valley billionaires exit California over the tax, “I will miss them very much.”
This tweet sparked a fierce revolt from tech executives and investors, many of whom were previously among Khanna’s biggest donors and allies. Venture capitalist Ethan Agarwal launched a primary challenge against Khanna, accusing him of prioritizing future presidential ambitions over his district’s interests. Former Google chairman Eric Schmidt began backing a super PAC to oppose the ballot measure and push a competing initiative to block the wealth tax. Even Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom — also seen as a 2028 presidential contender — came out “adamantly” against the measure. Anduril Industries founder Palmer Luckey, who is worth $3.6 billion, spoke out against Khanna and his support for the billionaire tax. “You are fighting to force founders like me to sell huge chunks of our companies to pay for fraud, waste, and political favors for the organizations pushing this ballot initiative,” Luckey wrote in a post on X.
Against this backdrop, Huang’s appearance with Khanna is notable for his status as the eighth richest person in the world, with a net worth of about $167 billion, alone. The one-time billionaires tax would cost him more than $8 billion, but he has been saying for months that he’s happy to pay up.
In January, as news of his fellow billionaires’ exodus to Florida and Nevada emerged, Huang told Bloomberg that he was “perfectly fine” paying the billionaires tax. “I haven’t thought about it even once,” he said. “We work in Silicon Valley because that’s where the talent pool is. We have offices all over the world. Wherever there’s talent, we have an office.”
Despite concerns about how the levy would affect California’s tax base from people such as Gov. Gavin Newsom, the tax is still not on the ballot. The tax’s proponents need to get about 875,000 valid signatures supporting the initiative by June 25 to qualify for the Nov. 3 election.
“We chose to live in Silicon Valley, and whatever taxes they would like to apply, so be it,” Huang said.
Pushing back on AI ‘narratives’
Huang’s comments on California came as he and Khanna addressed fears over AI taking over jobs. Even in business-friendly California, Americans are souring on artificial intelligence, and Nvidia technology is at the center of AI development.
“I think the narratives of AI destroying jobs is not going to help America,” Huang said. “First of all, it’s just false. Of course, with every technology, and every single day that goes by, jobs of the past are changed.”
He gave the example of the jobs of radiologists. In 2016, Geoffrey Hilton—the computer scientist widely considered to be the “Godfather of AI”—predicted radiologists’ jobs would be completely replaced by AI because the technology would easily read and analyze scans.”
“A decade later, he was completely right. AI has completely permeated through every aspect of radiology. Every single radiology scan is now assisted by AI,” Huang said. “The part that was exactly opposite is the number of radiologists increased.”
Why was that, he asked.
“The purpose of your job and the tasks that you do in your job are related but not the same,” he explained. “Using myself as an example, if they were the same, then somebody would observe that what Jensen does really for a living is typing and talking. And typing and talking have both been automated to a superhuman level by AI. And yet I’m busier than ever,” he said.
In the case of radiologists, their job is to help diagnose diseases and work with patients and doctors, Huang said. Now with AI, radiologists can admit more patients and do more scans. This increases profits for hospitals, which encourages them to hire more radiologists. The field is expected to grow by 25% by 2055, according to the radiology organization Harvey L. Neiman Health Policy Institute.
“The jobs didn’t disappear. The task was automated,” Huang said.
