Uber cofounder Travis Kalanick dodges a $180 million California tax by moving to Texas

Travis Kalanick, Uber's Billionaire cofounder, packed up his life and moved to Austin, Texas, just weeks before a strict deadline that could have cost him a fortune. According to Fortune, Kalanick relocated on Dec. 18, 2025, dodging a possible $180 million hit from California's proposed Proposition 40.

1, 2026. With an estimated net worth of $3.6 billion, Kalanick made his exit just in time. \u201cJust to be clear, on December 18, I moved to Texas,\u201d Kalanick told TBPN. \u201cI don't know what's so specific about December 18, but let's just say it's prior to January.\u201d Kalanick is not alone in fleeing high-tax states.

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos also left Seattle for Miami before Washington passed its own millionaires tax, while Google cofounder Larry Page poured $173.4 million into two Miami estates. Stanford economists Benjamin Jaros and Joshua Rauh found that billionaires taking their wealth out of California have pulled about $540 billion, or nearly 30% of the taxable wealth, out of the state since the measure was filed.

Kalanick had already owned a home on Lake Austin for roughly five years and now runs Atoms, a robotics company formerly known as CloudKitchens. Whether his escape holds up depends on whether California tax authorities agree he truly made Texas his home, as the state retains broad power to audit departing billionaires. For now, he is trading California traffic for a five-minute jet ski commute across Lake Austin.

Photo: Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons, AI-edited