Groups led by Bay Area billionaires are funding half the cost of the Embarcadero Plaza redesign, which likely doesn’t ease critics’ concerns that the revamp will lose sight of the plaza's longheld tradition — to serve as a gathering spot for civic and artistic expression.

The Chronicle revealed Monday that two prominent billionaire-led civic groups are funding about half the cost of the estimated $40 million redesign of the Embarcadero Plaza and Sue Bierman Park. Venture capitalist Michael Moritz’s philanthropic foundation, Crankstart, is reportedly contributing $10 million, and the Downtown Development Corp (DDC) has pledged to acquire additional donors to match the other $10 million.

Formed last summer, the DDC is a business-backed civic group aligned with the mayor’s downtown revitalization agenda that's supported by major tech, real estate, and philanthropic donors including OpenAI, Salesforce, and Emerson Collective.

As SFist reported last month, plans for the project, which have not been finalized, have been in the works for two years. The 50-year-old brick plaza is set to be torn out, and the Vaillancourt Fountain was being removed earlier this month.

The current plans for the redesign feature a large main lawn on the Market Street side of the park, surrounded by areas for performances, food trucks, and outdoor dining. Next to the existing playground at Sue Bierman Park, there will be a second lawn space, a fitness area, and a designated dog-play area for nearby residents.

As the Chronicle reports, $18 million in public funds will also go toward the project, which is expected to start construction next year, through the city's 2024 Healthy, Safe, and Vibrant bond. Additionally, the Downtown SF Partnership community benefit district will also be contributing $2 million in private funding, and $2.5 million in design services will be donated by BXP, which owns the Embarcadero Center office complex and its various public spaces.

The Recreation and Park Commission is reportedly considering adding the DDC to an existing partnership between the city’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development, BXP, and the Downtown SF Partnership, which would require final approval from the Board of Supervisors.

“The DDC and our partners are working to transition downtown into a 24/7 destination that works for everyone where people want to live, gather, and experience this city day and night,” said the organization's CEO, Shola Olatoye.

SF Mayor Daniel Lurie vocalized support for the partnership’s efforts to push the project forward, adding that “we need all hands on deck and leadership from all sectors.” As the Chronicle reports, Moritz and Crankstart have contributed tens of millions of dollars to a range of groups that support Lurie’s agenda.

“Embarcadero Plaza and Sue Bierman Park belong to every San Franciscan, and we’re thrilled to help power their reinvention for generations to come,” said Crankstart CEO Missy Narula, per the Chronicle.

While many residents who’ve attended community meetings about the project have reportedly liked the redesign, some fear the new park will lack the original intent for which Embarcadero Plaza was designed — as a center for civic and artistic expression.

As previously reported, the new park will likely feature public art to be added at a later date, but as one Redditor points out, the new design would have much more appeal if it were centered around one bold, iconic large-scale art piece that was part of the design from the start.

Some residents feel that much like the rest of the recent public art in the city, whatever gets added later will likely come across as an after-thought, serving to attract tourists rather than engaging residents.

“They want an inoffensive front lawn for their shopping mall and office tower,” writes the Reddit user. “And that'll work for a couple years. Tourists will go there.”

“But I'm not sure I'm going cross town to visit a big open green space,” they continue. “There are better versions of that in GGP, the Presidio, the Marina, Noe valley (etc).”

Previously: Revised Plans For Embarcadero Plaza Renovation Unveiled, Including Grand Lawn and Dog Park

Rendering by HOK

• Contra Costa College in San Pablo is forgiving up to $1,000 in school debt for its graduating students who don’t qualify for free tuition — thanks to a $31,000 gift donation from the college’s foundation. [KPIX]
• Billionaires Michael Moritz and Chris Larsen, who both opposed SF Mayor Daniel Lurie during the 2024 mayor’s race, have together pledged $4 million to his agenda, primarily the city’s charter reform. [Mission Local]
• The city of San Francisco awarded a former employee at the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner $750,000 after she was allegedly wrongfully fired for reporting a skull she found in the trash that was supposed to be kept for evidence. [Chronicle]

National:

• An Oklahoma high school principal tackled a 20-year-old armed gunman last week who was targeting the principal in a Columbine-style attack against his former school. [NBC News]
• 7-Eleven is closing 645 of its North American stores as its operator, Japan-based Seven & i Holdings Co., moves to convert many of its locations to wholesale fuel stores. [Associated Press]
• Vice President JD Vance said at a Turning Point USA event Tuesday that just as he has to be careful as vice president about what he says regarding political affairs, Pope Leo XIV should “be careful” when he talks about theology. [NBC News]

Video:

• This stunning community and artist-led public art mural, On Indigenous Land; The Story of Rinihmu Pulte’Irekne (2024) by artist Cece Carpio, covers the exterior of the restroom structure at Joaquin Miller Park in the Oakland Hills. The panels move the viewer through the passage of time — sunrise, day, sunset, and night, conveying the visual story of the land, which was recently returned to Indigenous stewardship.

Image: Leanne Maxwell/SFist

In an opinion piece in the New York Times this week, Craig Newmark of Craigslist fame wrote about his decision to sign the “Giving Pledge” last year with the goal of giving up to $1 billion to nonprofits, and he’s been encouraging other wealthy people to do the same.

As San Francisco’s beloved online marketplace, Craigslist, turns 31 this year, founder and philanthropist Craig Newmark said in an interview with NBC Bay Area that he's made it his mission to “inspire other people with too much money” to donate some of their fortunes to good causes. Newmark wrote in an Op-Ed for the New York Times Monday that he’s donated $450 million of his wealth so far, and last year, he signed the “Giving Pledge” to donate up to $1 billion.

“When I started Craigslist in the mid-1990s I never thought I’d become rich. But I did,” writes Newmark. “A lot of people in tech around that time also got lucky. Millions — even billions — were made simply by being in the right place at the right time.”

“That’s too much money for anyone to have, so I’m giving most of it away to people and causes that need it,” he continues.

Newmark explains in the Times that the Giving Pledge, which was founded by Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, and Melinda French Gates, is geared toward very wealthy people who agree to give most of their fortunes away to charitable causes before their deaths or through their wills.

“After donating more than $450 million over the past decade or so I was well on my way to doing it on my own,” he writes. “But I thought being more public about giving might help convince someone else with a lot of money to give it away, too.”

Newmark writes that he’s been spreading the word about the pledge, but he says some billionaires have vocally criticized it, calling it foolish to give away one’s fortune, especially to “leftwing” nonprofits. He explains that the pledge allows donors to choose whichever charitable causes they want.

“It makes no sense to me that others with this kind of money would criticize anyone doing this,” he writes, via the Times.

“I use the money I made to help people who are trying to make life better for all of us humans,” he explains. “It seems to me that the 250 or so people who signed the pledge are trying to do some version of the same thing. How is that not a good thing?”

Newmark's donations reportedly support causes like independent journalism, active military personnel and veterans, cybersecurity, and pigeon rescue groups.

Newmark, who started Craigslist as an email list for San Francisco events in the 1990s, describes himself in the Times as a programmer rather than a businessman, and says he kept the site intentionally simple and largely free for users. He turned down early buyout offers and introduced limited fees mainly for commercial postings, arguing it wasn’t fair for companies to profit off the platform without contributing.

“When I became accidentally wealthy it meant a lot to me that I could help people who were less lucky,” writes Newmark.

Image: NEW YORK, NEW YORK - NOVEMBER 06: Craig Newmark attends the 17th Annual Stand Up For Heroes Benefit presented by Bob Woodruff Foundation and NY Comedy Festival at David Geffen Hall on November 06, 2023 in New York City. (Photo by Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images for Bob Woodruff Foundation)

We heard a few weeks ago that Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan were, for reasons we can only guess, seeking out a new home in Miami, and the deal reportedly closed on Monday.

As Bloomberg reports, the Zuckerberg-Chans have purchased some land and a partially constructed mansion in the gated community of Indian Creek, overlooking Biscayne Bay, for a record-breaking $170 million. The previous record-high price in Miami-Dade County was set in 2025 by developer Vlad Doronin, with the $120 million sale of his mansion on Star Island.

The property is at 7 Indian Creek Island Road, on the man-made island that has become known in the area as "Billionaire Bunker." Google Street View has, of course, not been allowed to map the area, but a satellite image shows an empty parcel of land at that address beside another enormous looking mansion. Per Bloomberg, the sellers were celebrity plastic surgeon Aaron Rollins and his wife, Marine, and some kind of construction has apparently occurred since this satellite image was taken.

The Zuckerberg-Chans have barely just finished construction on the controversial compound they've assembled out of multiple homes on a quiet block in Palo Alto, and they already own vacation homes in Hawaii and on Lake Tahoe. So this may just be a place to park some of Zuckerberg's $231 billion estimated net worth, or it may be a way for the family to declare themselves residents of Florida in the coming years, if, say, California passes that billionaire's tax.

Or, maybe they're planning to actually high-tail it out of Palo Alto for good, given that the city council has recently been getting more hostile to billionaire compounds like theirs. Might as well go where the billionaires are more welcome and all share a country club!

Indian Creek, the island, dates back to around 1900, when it was created out of earth dredged out of Biscayne Bay for drainage. Development there began in 1928, with a group of five men — Midwesterners Harold Metzing, Walter Briggs, Fred Todd, and Edwin Gould, along with John Brander of Virginia — purchased what was then mostly a mangrove swamp, and mapped out 41 waterfront home lots priced at $20,000 apiece wrapping around an 18-hole golf course.

The country club remains ultra-exclusive, with a $500,000 initiaition fee, and membership is reportedly mostly restricted to the 41 homeowners on the island.

Other billionaire residents of Indian Creek include Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, and former football player Tom Brady.

Previously: Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan to Get Even Cozier With Trump Via Miami Mansion Purchase

The billionaires who don’t want to pay the California billionaire tax are lining up big bucks to defeat the ballot measure, but Gavin Newsom and Daniel Lurie deny reports they will appear in ads against the billionaire tax.

The already controversial proposed California billionaire tax has not even qualified for the November ballot yet, but the billionaire class is already organizing against the measure with increasing fury. Supporters of the billionaire tax just only just started collecting signatures to qualify for the ballot this week, and they face the tall task of pulling together 900,000 signatures by April if they want to make the ballot.  

Mind you, this one-time, 5% tax on people with more than $1 billion net worth would only affect about 250 people statewide. If the billionaire tax passed, it would raise tens of billions of dollars that would counteract Trump cuts to the state’s healthcare and Medi-Cal programs. But the counterargument is that all the billionaires would flee from California, leaving the state with less tax revenue in the long run.

And the New York Times reported Wednesday that Governor Gavin Newsom and SF Mayor Daniel Lurie were joining the fight against the billionaire tax, though reps for both have since insisted they are not connected to the campaign.* Per the Times, Newsom and Lurie were both reportedly drafted in by "crypto executives and business leaders,” who are said to be cranking out some big-money advertisements, plus three competing ballot measures meant to either undermine the billionaire tax, confuse voters with similar measures, or invalidate the billionaire tax with other measures that would weaken it to the point of uselessness.  

The Times describes Newsom as “considering a presidential run in 2028,” which is completely understating it, because Gavin Newsom is absolutely running for president in 2028. The billionaire tax apparently makes Newsom skittish of California’s (well-deserved) reputation for high taxes on high-earners, and of course Gavin has to keep that ultra-wealthy donor base of his happy.

But Lurie’s addition was something of a surprise. The Times reported that the ads will feature "Democrats and Republicans alike, along with Mayor Daniel Lurie of San Francisco, a moderate Democrat and a wealthy heir to the Levi Strauss fortune."

A rep for Lurie has since denied the Times' reporting, and said that Lurie will be making no such ad. SFist has received similar denials from representatives of Governor Gavin Newsom.

That ad campaign has our old friend Ron Conway bankrolling the effort, though more high-net-worth donors are expected to be revealed in the days to come.

Meanwhile, SF’s own surveillance camera financier Chris Larsen just pumped $5 million into into an anti-billionaire-tax PAC called Golden State Promise, and the Times reports their message will be that a billionaire tax "will hurt working people" (somehow). Meanwhile, Google co-founder Sergey Brin is helping build a separate PAC called Building a Better California, which expects to pour $35 million into the three competing ballot measures that hope to undermine or cancel out the billionaire tax.

Per the Times, Team Billionaire is paying signature-gatherers $12 per valid signature they collect, while supporters of the billionaire tax are paying a reported $10 per signature.

So expect to be accosted hard by signature-gatherers whenever you visit a Safeway in the weeks and months to come.

Update: Senator Bernie Sanders, who is backing the proposed billionaire tax, held a rally in Los Angeles' Koreatown Wednesday night, as ABC 30 reports. Sanders reportedly did not mention Newsom in a 30-minute speech, and the station reports that while "Newsom has long opposed state-level wealth taxes, believing such levies would be disadvantageous for the world's fourth-largest economy... he is trying to block the proposal before it reaches the ballot."

Related: Billionaires Going Berserk on Twitter Over Proposed California Billionaire Tax [SFist]

Image: SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA - JANUARY 16: California Gov. Gavin Newsom (L) looks on with San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie during a press conference at Friendship House Association of American Indians on January 16, 2026 in San Francisco, California. California Gov. Gavin Newsom joined San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie to announce new funding for homelessness and mental health efforts in the city of San Francisco. The governor announced more than $420 million in new state funding for San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Diego as part of the state's HHAP 6 funding, which goes toward helping local programs end homelessness through interim or permanent housing and supportive services. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

*This post has been corrected to show that Newsom's and Lurie's reps say they will not be appearing in these ads. This was based on New York Times reporting that remains uncorrected as of this writing.

I truly hope the billionaires all someday have to perform elaborate mea culpas — or be brought up on charges! — for colluding and sucking up to Trump in this era. And notably this week, former liberal Mark Zuckerberg is reportedly seeking a new piece of real estate in Miami.

Is Zuckerberg just the latest billionaire to make a panic purchase and call a lawyer to have his official residence changed ahead of a possible "billionaire's tax" that isn't even on the ballot yet? Or has he just taken to Indian Creek, the posh enclave north of Miami Beach where Ivanka Trump has a home, a short drive from Mar-a-Lago, where Zuck has been a repeat guest lately?

Regardless of the reason, the Wall Street Journal is reporting that Zuckerberg and wife Priscilla Chan have been house shopping on the man-made island in Biscayne Bay that's been nicknamed "Billionaire's Bunker," which is also home to Tom Brady and Jeff Bezos, among others.

The home, on the waterfront of Indian Creek, is reportedly newly constructed, and a transaction is underway if not already complete.

This adds to the Zuckerberg-Chans' multiple real estate holdings, all of them essentially bunkers/compounds of their own, in Palo Alto, on the western shore of Lake Tahoe, and on the Hawaiian island of Kauai, where the couple added 1,000 acres to their compound last year.

With three school-aged daughters, how many places can this family logistically live in during the course of a year?! We shall see. But perhaps these are all decent places to park pieces of Zuckerberg's estimated $240 billion fortune.

We don't know how much the Miami house is going to cost the couple, but it could be a significant sum. As Bloomberg notes, Google co-founder Sergey Brin is in the process of buying a home on Biscayne Bay worth $50 million, and fellow co-founder Larry Page has bought a three-house compound in nearby Coconut Grove for a cool $190 million.

Do they know something we don't about future hurricane patterns, or...?

In any event, this certainly could be a play toward pretending that the Zuckerberg-Chans don't primarily reside in Palo Alto, should a billionaire's tax actually come to pass. And/or Priscilla is just dying to have Ivanka and Jared over for dinner while Zuckerberg practices his golf swing to play with the prez.

Previously: Palo Alto City Council to Take Up Legislation to Clamp Down on Billionaire Compounds

Top image: Priscilla Chan (L) and Mark Zuckerberg attend WSJ. Magazine 2025 Innovator Awards at MOMA on October 29, 2025 in New York City. (Photo by TheStewartofNY/WireImage)

A few dozen supporters showed up for Saturday’s decidedly unironic “March for Billionaires” protest, which was evenly matched by several members of the press and a group of activists one-upping the sympathizers with a satirical “March for Trillionaires” rally.

As Mission Local reports, a small contingent of billionaire supporters, who claim they’re not actually billionaires themselves, held a “March for Billionaires” protest at Alta Plaza Park in San Francisco’s Pacific Heights Saturday morning. Naturally, the event drew a crowd of onlookers, including several journalists and about a dozen animated protestors dressed in formal wear, proclaiming they were taking part in a “March for Trillioinaires,” per Broke-Ass Stuart on Instagram.

As SFist reported earlier this week, many assumed the original march was some sort of joke, but the organizers confirmed their intention was to spread awareness about their grievances against the billionaire tax. Per the LA Times, the pro-billionaire crowd thinks Californians should be grateful for the billionaires who hoard their fortunes here.

“We must not judge billionaires as a class but by their individual merits,” said organizer Derik Kauffman Saturday, per the Times. “There are good billionaires and bad billionaires, just like there are good people and bad people. California is extraordinarily lucky that this is where people come to start companies and build fortunes and we should do our best to keep it that way.”

As the Chronicle reports, about a dozen nearby counter-protestors dressed to the nines — including a Mr. Monopoly lookalike and a couple nicknamed “Oli Garch” and “Trilly O’Naire,” per the Times, held signs with messages such as “Let them eat cake” and “Defund the poor,” per the Chronicle. Per Broke-Ass Stuart, one participant sported a chef’s hat and bushy mustache while hoisting a stuffed “Chef Bourgeoisie” puppet into the air.

Meanwhile, the pro-billionaire participants boasted signs with messages, such as, “We *heart* you Jeffrey Bezos,” per Mission Local, and “Gains from trade,” per the Chronicle.

“I would say we were horrified that they’ve been talking about taxing billionaires to pay for Medicaid, to pay for hunger prevention, to pay for kids’ education. That is not a good use of my money,” quipped a counter-protestor, per the Chronicle. “You want to know a good use of my money? I’ve got this other island I’m looking at.”

Per Mission Local, a pro-billionaire protestor named Annie provided some choice quotes, including the notion that journalists should be eliminated.

“It is the intention of journalists to lie, which is why we need to not do anything to the journalists themselves, but we need to simply remove them as a class,” said Annie, per Mission Local. “Just like Germany does to the extremist organizations.”

And of course, the poors are “just jealous.” “People are just jealous that they are poorer and weaker and uglier,” said Annie, per Mission Local. “We are beautiful. We’re smart. We’re strong… We are supporting the billionaires, here.”

Artist Razelle Swimmer, the counter-protestor who brought the Chef Bourgeoisie puppet, pointed out the absurdity of the pro-billionaire stance to the Chronicle. “There are people literally on the streets that don’t have anything to eat in the place where we’re ending this march,” said Swimmer, referring to the Civic Center area.

“It’s sad,” Swimmer said, per the Chronicle. “They represent a group of Americans who still believe in this concept that if you just pull yourself hard enough by your bootstraps, you’ll have $8 billion.”

Image: Our Revolution/Threads

Previously: A ‘Pro-Billionaire’ March and Rally Is Coming to SF Saturday, and Apparently This Is Not a Joke

A group claiming that “Vilifying billionaires is popular. Losing them is expensive” is holding a March for Billionaires in SF on Saturday, seemingly hoping to tap some silent majority that actually loves the billionaire class.

In the age of an affordability crisis for most of us, and corrupt crypto scams making the mega-rich even mega-richer, there has been a recent surge of interest in a proposed California billionaire tax that may or may not appear on a statewide 2026 California ballot measure. The measure has not made the ballot, nor has it even collected any signatures to do so. But a wild overreaction by several high-profile billionaires has bought this little-known proposed ballot measure a ton of free publicity, and early polling indicates that as things stand now, the billionaire tax would pass.  

So at group of people who are apparently sympathetic to the “long-suffering” billionaire class is organizing a March for Billionaires this coming Saturday, as Mission Local reported over the weekend. From all appearances, this is not satire, but a real, organized march by those who would genuinely hate to see the billionaire class taxed at a higher rate.

“Most made their fortunes building companies that employ thousands and solve real problems. Their wealth is largely stock in those companies, not vaults of cash,” the March for Billionaires website declares. “The Billionaire Tax Act has already pushed the founders of Google to leave the state, taking their economic contributions with them. By taxing unrealized gains and voting shares, the act would make it difficult for founders to retain control of their startups.”

Mission Local managed to get a statement out of these (anonymous) March for Billionaires organizers, and they appear to be dead serious, and not ironic or sarcastic.

“We sincerely believe what we’re saying,” organizers told Mission Local. “We think most American billionaires have had greatly positive societal impacts, directly and indirectly. We support wealth creation and oppose rent-seeking/extraction, anticompetitive practices, and regulatory capture.”

They also claimed they were remaining anonymous because of “some threats” online, and insist they are not funded by billionaires or “outside groups.”

For what it’s worth, the March for Billionaires is scheduled for this Saturday, February 7 (the day before the Super Bowl) starting in Pac Heights’ Alta Plaza Park at 11 am, then proceeding down Fillmore Street, and supposedly ending with a 12:30 pm rally at Civic Center Plaza. We would think this is certain to attract more counterprotesters than actual marchers, but who knows, and we do imagine they’ll get a fair amount of media attention.

Related: Billionaires Going Berserk on Twitter Over Proposed California Billionaire Tax [SFist]

Image: WASHINGTON, DC - MAY 13: Advocates pose as Monopoly men and wealthy DOGE supporters while protesting tax breaks for billionaires and the Republican tax plan, inside and outside the Ways & Means Full Committee Markup to advance the legislation in the Longworth House Office Building on May 13, 2025 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Paul Morigi/Getty Images for Stop Billionaires Tax Cuts Campaign)

There’s a signature drive to put a 5% “billionaire tax” on the California ballot. It has not collected even one signature, but the billionaires are freaking out on Twitter with grand tantrums saying they will leave the state en masse.

We live in a nation where the richest 1% owns 30% of all wealth in the US. And the system is clearly set up to favor the mega-rich investor class. Billionaire investor Warren Buffett complained for years that he has a lower tax rate than his own secretary, and it has been brought up in many political campaigns that billionaires pay a lower tax rate than teachers and nurses. Billionaires Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and George Soros have gone several years paying no federal income taxes whatsoever, contributing to an era of very extreme income inequality that has no precedent in modern times, if not the entire history of human civilization.

Consider in this context a New York Times article published on Friday of last week, saying that some California political activists were working on a ballot measure for a one-time 5% tax on billionaires’ wealth in the state, and how a couple high-profile billionaires are throwing a stink that they will leave California because of it. That Friday article led to a full-blown, four-alarm Christmas weekend marathon of wealthy tech bros throwing massive Twitter tantrums saying that they were going to leave the state of California.

Wait, aren't these wealthy tech bros the exact same assholes who were just begging for a government bailout when Silicon Valley Bank when belly-up in March 2023? (As seen above.) Yes, these are those exact same assholes. And their Twitter histrionics may be giving this currently theoretical ballot measure’s signature drive the greatest free advertising campaign it could have ever dreamed of.

This story first popped up in the New York Post on December 22, in an article interestingly written by two recent SF Standard staff writers who’ve since moved on to the right-wing Fox News ecosystem. That article quotes YC Combinator CEO Garry Tan (technically not a billionaire, he would not be affected) and one tax advisor, both saying that the billionaires would all leave California if forced to pay higher taxes.

The NY Times article came out four days later, and does name specific billionaires' names. It says that Google co-founder Larry Page and straight-to-DVD knockoff Bond villain Peter Thiel were “cutting or reducing their ties to California by the end of the year,” and that this information came “according to five people familiar with their thinking.”

The Times article also notes that Governor Gavin Newsom is dead-set against this billionaire tax, as Newsom too fears that billionaires would flee California.

The thing is, this so-called California Billionaire Tax Act is not even a real ballot proposal yet. The effort has not even collected one single signature to make the 2026 (or whenever) ballot, and it would require 870,000 signatures to do so. The effort is being spearheaded by the SEIU-United Healthcare Workers West labor union.

As the Chronicle explains, the measure would impose a one-time 5% tax on any California resident with a net worth of more than $1 billion, with most of the revenue going toward the state’s healthcare system.  The Chronicle also lists the 214 current California billionaires who would be hit with the tax. And it would hit billionaires on their favorite accounting trick, by taxing the currently untaxed unrealized capital gains (this is, unsold stock), which is what constitutes most of their mind-boggling fortunes.  

Those mind-boggling fortunes have gotten much larger just in the last year, as billionaires are currently paying no taxes at all on what is by far the largest driver of their ever-growing wealth.

Seriously, maybe some of these people really do have just too much money to throw around?

And oh, the billionaires and their lickspittles have spent the last five days throwing histrionic tantrums on Twitter, as if paying taxes is “confiscating” when it happens to wealthy people, but perfectly fine when taxation is applied to the middle- and lower-class populations.

Some billionaires have taken a more measured approach to their rage-tweeting, but it’s still pretty clear that taxing unrealized capital gains is literally the billionaires’ worst nightmare.

KRON4 notes that Silicon Valley Congressional rep Ro Khanna has jumped into the discourse, supporting the billionaire tax, and jokingly saying of the billionaires threatening to leave, “I will miss them very much.”

There is some dispute over Rep. Khanna’s claim that this is a “1% tax on billionaires for 5 years.” It is a one-time 5% tax, but people would have five years to pay it. I’m no tax accountant, so I cannot say whether Khanna is distorting the matter.

But the billionaires are fucking furious over this, that is for sure. Above we see diehard Trumper VC David Sacks high on his own supply of the “billionaires are victims” card, and other prominent rich MFs are vowing to primary Ro Khanna out of Congress, as they assume that billionaires and their perspectives somehow have enormous widespread popular public support.

That’s… probably not the case? Which is the funny thing about this Silicon Valley rich people freakout about the proposed billionaire tax. The rich guys’ tantrums are probably doing more to elevate interest in and awareness of the ballot measure and its upcoming signature drive. And they're providing a massive boost of free marketing to the signature-gatherers who will need nearly 900,000 signatures to get this previously far-fetched proposition onto the ballot.

Related: Report: Ron Conway Was Among Venture Capitalists Begging For Silicon Valley Bank Bailout [SFist]

Image: WASHINGTON, DC - JANUARY 20: Guests including Mark Zuckerberg, Lauren Sanchez, Jeff Bezos, Sundar Pichai and Elon Musk attend the Inauguration of Donald J. Trump in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda on January 20, 2025 in Washington, DC. Donald Trump takes office for his second term as the 47th president of the United States. (Photo by Julia Demaree Nikhinson - Pool/Getty Images)

A Palo Alto city councilmember is introducing some unusual new legislation today that is aimed squarely at the billionaires in the city — ahem, Zuckerberg — who have spent years gobbling up formerly middle-class homes and assembling compounds that undergo years of endless construction.

Spurred on by a New York Times investigative piece in August that looked into the eight years of constant construction and questionable legality of the multi-property compound owned by Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Dr. Priscilla Chan, Palo Alto City Councilmember Greer Stone is introducing legislation Thursday aimed at improving the quality of life for the neighbors of the city's multiple billionaires.

As Stone tells the Times this week, "To see other people take housing out of the housing stock in such a flippant way is frustrating. The growing discrepancy between the top 1 percent and the rest of us has never been more clear."

Stone, who along with his wife is a school teacher who rents a one-bedroom apartment in Palo Alto, does not ever foresee being able to own a home himself in Palo Alto. But he's hoping that his legislation will help improve life for the middle-class neighbors of the Zuckerberg-Chans and others, and perhaps add some more affordable housing stock to the city.

The proposed legislation would outlaw the buying of property in order to leave it empty, and it would seek detailed schedules for any construction projects lasting more than six months. The law would also prevent new construction from beginning less than three years after any major project was complete.

The legislation is unusual in that will only apply to residents who have purchased three or more properties with 500 feet of each other — essentially aimed at just these billionaire compounds. And it would further limit the use of unmarked private security vehicles.

As UC Davis law professor Christopher Elmendorf tells the times, the law may be unusual, but, "the problem of having many people worth more than $10 billion in your city is also unusual, right?"

But the legislation may not have any teeth, because as the Times points out, it leaves enforcement responsibility up to neighbors who live within 500 feet of any construction project.

As Michael Kieschnick, one Zuckerberg neighbor who spoke to the Times for the August article, puts it, "Who would sue Mark Zuckerberg?"

But it's a step in the right direction for neighbors like him, who say that the City of Palo Alto has essentially let themselves be bulldozed over by the billionaires. Case in point: After the Zuckerberg-Chans were told by the city back in 2016 that they couldn't just demolish four homes and redraw property lines to create a compound, guess what they ended up doing anyway?

And from the sound of it, it's no picnic being Larry Page's or Marissa Mayer's neighbor either. So perhaps a little heat from the city council will at least encourage some more politeness around construction schedules, or something.

Previously: Mark Zuckerberg's Palo Alto Compound, With 'Bunkers,' Has Reportedly Been Under Constant Construction For 8 Years

• A mass recall of shredded cheese has expanded to include 1 million bags sold by major retailers, including Target, Walmart, and Aldi across 31 states and Puerto Rico. [Yahoo News]
• A car crashed into a Fremont apartment building Wednesday, displacing five adults, a child, and a cat, but no injuries were reported. [NBC Bay Area]
• San Jose police arrested a man who allegedly threw two Molotov cocktails at Henry’s World Famous Hi-Life restaurant earlier this week in a targeted arson attack. [KRON4]

• Keep an eye out for the ever delightful and festive Tree Twins around town during the holiday season; they made an appearance at Drag Queens on Ice Friday evening. [Tree Twins/Instagram]

Image: Leanne Maxwell/SFist

Neighbors of the Chan-Zuckerbergs in Palo Alto's Crescent Park neighborhood say that the city and local police have basically bent over backwards to accommodate their local celebrity billionaire, at everyone else's expense.

We're pretty well familiar with the real estate doings of the billionaire class around here. And Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been quite the gobbler of real estate both in the Bay Area and beyond in the decade plus since he joined that billionaire class, got married, and started having kids.

Zuckerberg and his wife have long called Palo Alto home — choosing its more dense, suburban environs over places like Los Altos, Hillborough, Woodside, or Atherton where they could have had a bit more space. And it was a full nine years ago that SFist was reporting on the couple's plan to demolish four homes they purchased around their main home in order to create more privacy. At the time, the City of Palo Alto rejected those plans, saying that a billionaire couldn't just redraw lot lines and construct a compound however he liked.

But now, nine years on, neighbors tell the New York Times that the Chan-Zuckerbergs went ahead creating a five-property compound anyway, turning one of those buildings, illegally, into a private school, and building some 7,000 square feet of possibly connected basements that they call a "bunker" and Zuck's "bat cave."

And that's not all. Zuckerberg has reportedly assembled a total of 11 properties both on the same block and across the street, buying up six of them in just the last three years at enormous expense — sometimes double or triple what they're worth. And one next-door neighbor who's been a holdout in this spree, Michael Kieschnick, tells the Times that his property is now bound on three sides by Zuck-owned properties, and he complains, "No neighborhood wants to be occupied. But that’s exactly what they’ve done. They’ve occupied our neighborhood."

"Billionaires everywhere are used to just making their own rules," Kieschnick adds. "But it’s a mystery why the city has been so feckless."

Zuck has apparently made offers on Kieschnick's home, but he's turned them down, so far.

Entire, habitable homes are apparently just being used as staging areas for outdoor parties. And it sees like the couple is on a mission to buy up the entire block whenever they get the chance.

The Times has aerial imagery showing the various houses in the compound that were demolished to make way for smaller buildings, a pool, and the massive underground portion.

Neighbors say the disruptions have been constant, whether it be construction noise over the last eight years, construction equipment and trucks blocking their way home, or noise from large parties that the couple has thrown. Some tell the Times that their street is "used as the compound’s shipping and receiving dock, and parking lot," and setups and teardowns for parties can take days.

As for the illegal private school, which apparently has 14 students — including, presumably, the Chan-Zuckerbergs' three daughters — and at least six staffers including four teachers, the city has apparently done nothing to penalize them for running it on a block where no such use is permitted.

The city claims, on the record, that no preferential treatment has been granted to the billionaire couple, but pretty clearly it has — they had originally pledged not to tear down any homes, but they went ahead and did that anyway. And local police even provide special security reserved for dignitaries when they throw events.

Neighbors of the Chan-Zuckerbergs' former home on Liberty Hill, near SF's Dolores Park, are clearly glad that the couple gave up on their enormous pied-a-terre there, selling it in 2022 after 10 years and many years of construction disruptions as the couple built some sort of city compound. But they've gone on to build other compounds in Hawaii and on Lake Tahoe, and as Zuckerberg must see himself kissing Trump's ring for the next few years, he's made sure to purchase a $23 million mansion in DC this year as well.

And does Zuckerberg ever leave the compound to make nice with the nighborhood, like at their annual block party? No. But he apparently sent them an ice cream cart for the last event, and neighbors tell the Times they've received other gifts over the years as apologies for noise, including chocolates, sparkling wine, and noise-canceling headphones.

Photo via Google Earth

Mountainhead, the timely new film on HBO/Max by Succession creator Jesse Armstrong, is a somewhat satisfying if deeply unsettling sendup of tech-bro oligarchy and the convoluted-logic-as-wisdom rhetoric of their podcasts. And it also manages to draw a strange parallel between these bros and the recently publicly exposed mini-cult — if we can call it that — the Zizians.

Bear with me for a second. First off, Mountainhead is neither a fantastic watch nor an entirely painful one. It is a solid directorial debut for Armstrong, who also wrote it — and this was apparently pitched and all pulled together, complete with a location shoot in a modern mountaintop manse near Park City, Utah, in the last six months. There are a handful of hearty laughs skewering the sheer arrogance an absurdity of these self-anointed masters of the universe, and it all gets taken to a fairly extreme, absurd place [spoilers to follow!].

The film brings with it some of the love-to-hate-them energy of Succession, though with less time for an audience to find anything to be endeared by or relate to in these four tech capitalists — three multi-billionaires and a lowly friend they call "Souperman" or "Soup Kitchen," played by Jason Schwartzman, a "lifestyle app" founder who is merely worth $521 million. And it very much feels like it could have been adapted from a stage play, with just four main actors and shot almost entirely in this one house.

Cory Michael Smith, who recently had a star turn on Saturday Night playing an arrogant and self-satisfied young Chevy Chase, is well cast as the energetic, seemingly sociopathic Venis (looks like "penis," pronounced like "menace"). He can be described as a Mark Zuckerberg type, founder and CEO of a major social media platform called Traam, but more attractive, more blindly confident and maybe more charismatic, and less cautious.

One of Venis's signature lines, as they watch the world burn on their phones: "Nothing means anything, and everything is funny and cool."

Steve Carell plays Randall, whom the other "Brewsters," as the cohort calls itself, refer to as "Papa Bear," and who also gets called "Dark Money Gandalf" at one point. Randall feels like an amalgam of multiple real-life founders and venture capitalists who enjoy philosophizing to anyone who'll listen, including Elon Musk, Peter Thiel and maybe like a less scrupulous Warren Buffett.

And Ramy Youssef plays Jeff, the youngest of the group and the newest multi-billionaire, whose AI model appears to be the key to solving the deep-fake nightmare that a newly released tool on Venis's platform is causing worldwide.

The four men look on and comment glibly about a rapidly unfolding global crisis that appears — improbably but maybe not! — to stem largely from mobs being motivated by this social media platform, and some hyper-realistic deep-fake videos being created by bad actors. A consequent financial crisis in multiple countries prompts them to begin imagining which countries to summarily take over for their own playthings, starting with Argentina.

In the way of many stageplays, things take a dark and climactic turn after Randall — who, by the way, is eager for a transhuman new world order, aided by AI, because he has some terminal disease — realizes both that Jeff disrespects him as being the first one in the group likely to die, and that Jeff is "anti-progress" because he won't roll over and sell Venis his AI model. Randall immediately begins discussing a plan with the other two Brewsters to kill Jeff and somehow dispose of his body and use their wealth to skirt any consequences, in order to make sure the AI deal goes through.

And here's where the Zizian parallels come in. The group throws around plenty of ideas that would be familiar to the Rationalist movement, which came to be among tech workers in the Bay Area and which spawned this Zizian offshoot, as we've referred to it. Jack "Ziz" LaSota espouses the idea of bifurcated brains, the two hemispheres being able to function independently of one another — sometimes with two different gender identities — and the Brewsters discuss something similar as well.

There's also a complete lack of true morality to their thought processes — Venis even proposes the debatable (to him) notion that other people are real — because of the urgency of addressing some coming change. And at one point, when Randall's undertanding of categorical morality as defined by Emmanuel Kant is questioned, he replies, "I take Kant really fucking seriously!"

In the case of the Zizians, it's the coming singularity and the urgency of protecting humanity that seems to trump any ideas of day-to-day morality — though, admittedly, Ziz is no Kant, and I'm not completely read-up on all her thinking. There is the idea that some brains are inherently bad, and we can see in some of the online evidence left behind by Ziz and others in the group that there's a general callousness toward intellectual weakness and toward people having mental health struggles — which appears to have led, indirectly or not, to a couple of suicides.

As Carell's character blithely quips in Mountainhead, speaking to Venis, "You’re always going to get some people dead."

The Chronicle today delves a bit into the unsolved killings of group member Michelle Zajko's parents on New Year's Eve 2022, in a suburb of Philadelphia. Zajko has written in an open letter from jail that she did not kill her parents, but police consider her a person of interest — and earlier reporting suggests that a former girlfriend of Zajko's left the country after learning that Ziz had allegedly instructed Zajko to kill her.

The group also appears to be more concerned with the morality of killing animals and encouraging everyone to become vegan than they do with individual human lives (maybe to set an example for our robot overlords?) — though only two individuals directly involved with Ziz, Somni Leathem and Suri Dao, so far face murder charges. (21-year-old Teresa Youngblut remains in police custody in Vermont for the January killing of a Border Patrol agent, and the consequent killing of her friend Ophelia Bauckholt, but she only faces illegal gun charges so far. And 22-year-old Maximilian Snyder faces a murder charge for the January killing of Curtis Lind in Vallejo, though he has so far publicly disowned his connection to Ziz.)

Getting back to Mountainhead, it will no doubt be considered among a growing genre of satires about the tech industry in general, which includes the hilarious HBO series Silicon Valley. It also joins another recent genre, as Vulture points out, concerned with "eating the rich," which includes White Lotus, The Triangle of Sadness, and The Menu, as well as Succession.

But, those are all "comedies that assure us the elite are miserable, whether they get what’s coming to them or not; they also allow us to enjoy secondhand experiences of the luxuries they bask in and the terribleness with which they treat other people," Vulture writes. Mountainhead, by contrast, offers no such pleasures, and can feel "like nails on a chalkboard ... because it’s so unrelenting."

Related: New HBO Film From 'Succession' Creator Premieres Next Week Depicting Tech Billionaires During a Financial Crisis

A new, standalone feature film from Succession creator Jesse Armstrong, called Mountainhead, depicts four arrogant, fictional tech entrepreneurs cut from the same cloth as Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg, et al, having a boys' weekend at a lavish mountain retreat while the world experiences a financial meltdown.

Armstrong, who after winning multiple Emmys for his writing and producing work on Succession, is making his directorial debut with Mountainhead, which premieres on HBO and HBO Max — yes, we're calling it that again! — on May 31.

After finishing the final season Succession, Armstrong tells Vulture that he went down a rabbit hole of listening to tech and venture-capital podcasts, and reading books by and about tech founders — inspired partly by Michael Lewis’s Going Infinite, about convicted crypto fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried. He says he found that most of these (mostly) men shared "a straight-up arrogance, which is both scary and comic. You know, being unaware is a key reason why people are funny, and arrogance is a good way of being unaware. And then there’s a whole intellectual framework, which, broadly speaking, the Silicon Valley tech world brings."

Given the power being wielded these days by these American oligarchs, especially since the second election of Donald Trump, Armstrong saw the germ of timely story, which was rushed into production to make it on the air while this current chaotic period we're living in is still unfolding.

In real life, President Trump may have pulled us back from the brink of a worldwide financial crisis when he teased and then softened on some radically out-of-scale tariffs, but many are still set to take effect soon and we are hardly out of the woods.

In Mountainhead, four friends, three of whom are billionaires, watch from a luxury aerie as the world slips into a political and financial crisis — spurred in part by the release of a generative AI model by one of those in the room, Venis (pronounced like Dennis), played by Cory Michael Smith. The crisis prompts the president of the United States to seek out the help of the quartet, and they begin spitballing solutions.

"We are the smartest men in America," says Carrell's character in the trailer. "We literally have the resourcs to take over the world."

Carrell plays Randall, a venture capitalist whom Vulture says could be seen as a cross between Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Warren Buffett, and who the others call "Papa Bear." Ramy Yousseff plays Jeff, whose company has created a filter to ward against hyperrealistic generative-AI images, while Smith's character is like a more nefarious Zuckerberg, who owns a major social media platform that is being overrun by AI-faked videos and images. Jason Schwarzman plays Hugo Van Yalk, the only non-billionaire, who nonetheless owns the massive house in the mountains where they are all staying.

As for the crazy speed of production — it was greenlit in December, cast and written in January and February, and shot over five weeks in March and April, with editing probably still being done — Carrell says, "It feels like he called me on a Tuesday, we shot it on a Thursday, and then it’s coming out, like, the next Friday! It’s the most compact production process I’ve ever experienced."

We'll see what our local billionaires have to tweet about it, assuming they haven't received advance copies, after it comes out.

You may not have heard of Scale AI co-founder Lucy Guo, but she just passed Taylor Swift as the youngest self-made billionaire woman, though that’s all based on her ownership stake in a company she no longer works for, and might not even be profitable.

Just as the entertainment business has its “awards season” for big show-business names to win their honors and strut their importance, there is also an “awards season” for billionaires, which is happening right now. The month of April is when Forbes magazine reveals its annual billionaires list, measuring (and/or estimating) the net worth of the world’s wealthiest people. And then they do several follow-up articles of their more interesting findings, milking the list for everything it’s worth.

One of these follow-up findings will grab the attention of local AI startup types. As the Chronicle reports, the co-founder of SF-based AI startup Scale AI Lucy Guo has dethroned Taylor Swift as the world’s youngest self-made billionaire woman on the Forbes list, though this is an other-people’s-money calculation based on Scale AI’s recent $25 billion valuation.

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“I don’t really think about it much, it’s a bit wild. Too bad it’s all on paper haha,” Guo told Forbes via text upon learning of her new billionaire status.

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Taylor Swift is still worth more than Lucy Guo; Swift has an estimated net worth of $1.6 billion, Guo’s esteemed net worth is $1.25 billion. But at 30 years old, Guo had dethroned Swift as the youngest self-made woman on the billionaire’s list, as Swift is now 35 years old.

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And one can certainly quibble with Forbes’ definition of “self-made,” which excludes those with specific inheritances or divorce payouts. Both Guo and Swift still came from wealthy families, and doors were opened for them in a way they were not for everyone. Swift’s father was a VP at Merrill Lynch, Guo’s parents were both electrical enginners in Fremont, and had the money to send her to Carnegie Mellon to study computer science, where she dropped out once she got a Thiel Fellowship from Peter Thiel. This is not exactly a hard-scrabble upbringing.

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Guo went on to work at Facebook and Snapchat, before co-founding Scale AI with Alexandr Wang in 2016. Wang fired her in 2018, but she retains a 5% stake in the company, and now runs an OnlyFans competitor called Passes.

And Scale AI, while a big name in artificial intelligence, may not even be profitable. Wang claimed last year that “we expect to be profitable by the end of this year,” though it’s not clear that ever happened.  

And for the record, the wealthiest self-made woman on Forbes’ list is Melanie Perkins, the co-founder of an Australian software startup, as her net worth is estimated at $5.7 billion.

Related: Arnold Schwarzenegger Now a Billionaire, According to Forbes’ Latest List [SFist]

Images: (Left) @lucy_guo via Twitter, (Right) @taylorswift13 via Twitter