Mr. Brin told Mr. Newsom that he could not stand the state\u2019s proposed billionaire tax<\/a>. They were soon joined by Mr. Brin\u2019s girlfriend, Gerelyn Gilbert-Soto, a Trump-loving gut-health influencer. Even as she tried to defuse the tension \u2014 joking that she would let Mr. Newsom\u2019s bad policies slide because he was handsome \u2014 she argued that the measure would wreck California\u2019s economy.<\/p>\n Mr. Newsom, who had never seemed inclined to support the tax, came out the next month<\/a> and pledged to defeat it. He declined to comment on the interaction.<\/p>\n The December confrontation, which took place at a party thrown by the billionaire Chris Larsen and was recounted by three people briefed on it, reflected Mr. Brin\u2019s new war footing. He is growing more politically agitated, more willing to spend his estimated $273 billion fortune on elections and evidently more receptive to Republican points of view.<\/p>\n Mr. Brin, 52, long showed little interest in politics. When he did, he embraced liberal causes: He donated to a campaign to defend same-sex marriage in California in 2008 and backed President Barack Obama\u2019s re-election bid in 2012. He called President Trump\u2019s election in 2016 \u201cdeeply offensive\u201d in leaked comments<\/a> to Google employees and then joined a protest against Mr. Trump\u2019s ban on immigrants from several predominantly Muslim countries. In 2021, he quietly started a nonprofit group that has spent at least $88 million on climate and environmental policy.<\/p>\n But now, like so many other leaders in the traditionally liberal bastion of Silicon Valley, Mr. Brin has shifted to the right.<\/p>\n With his outspokenly conservative girlfriend by his side, he has joined the ranks of tech executives courting Mr. Trump in his second term. Last May, he attended a fund-raiser featuring Vice President JD Vance and donated nearly half a million dollars to the Republican National Committee. In September, he told the president at a White House dinner that he was \u201cvery grateful\u201d for the administration\u2019s support of tech companies. This March, he was named to a White House tech council<\/a> and donated to a Republican candidate for governor of California who has since earned Mr. Trump\u2019s endorsement<\/a>.<\/p>\n Mr. Brin is particularly rattled by the proposal for a one-time, 5 percent tax on California billionaires, and has emerged as Silicon Valley\u2019s leading combatant of the measure. To escape the tax, he moved before a Dec. 31 deadline to the Nevada side of Lake Tahoe (he now spends every other week at Google\u2019s California headquarters, alternating with Nevada, a person familiar with the arrangement said). And he has spent $57 million to try to undercut the measure, including $9 million more disclosed on Friday.<\/p>\n Asked for comment on this article, Mr. Brin said in a rare statement: \u201cI fled socialism with my family in 1979 and know the devastating, oppressive society it created in the Soviet Union. I don\u2019t want California to end up in the same place.\u201d<\/p>\n The New York Times spoke with more than a dozen people close to Mr. Brin for this article, many of whom were granted anonymity to describe private conversations.<\/p>\n Mr. Brin\u2019s spending, along with smaller donations in the California governor\u2019s race, have made him the state\u2019s second-largest individual donor this election cycle \u2014 behind only the billionaire Tom Steyer, who is running for governor himself.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is a guy who is not a hobbyist,\u201d said Marty Wilson, the longtime political chief of the California Chamber of Commerce, who has spoken with Mr. Brin\u2019s aides. \u201cHe\u2019s very serious and this isn\u2019t just some hobby for him. He\u2019s going to play big time.\u201d<\/p>\n A Girlfriend Who\u2019s a Big Trump Fan<\/p>\n Mr. Brin\u2019s political engagement has roughly coincided with his relationship with Ms. Gilbert-Soto, which began in 2023. Mr. Brin began dating her after divorcing from Nicole Shanahan<\/a>, who served in 2024 as Robert F. Kennedy Jr.\u2019s running mate.<\/p>\n Ms. Gilbert-Soto, 32, who goes by GG, describes herself on Instagram<\/a> as a \u201cholistic health coach\u201d and a \u201cclean meat enthusiast.\u201d She, like Mr. Brin, regularly attends the Burning Man festival, and she appeared on a season of the reality television series \u201cVanderpump Rules.\u201d<\/p>\n But she also styles herself as a firebrand in Trumpworld, and even some of the president\u2019s own aides are struck by her loyalty. She has called Mr. Trump her \u201cbestie,\u201d owns a clutch bedazzled with \u201cMAGA,\u201d and has shown off a photo of Mr. Brin in a red MAGA hat, two people who saw it said. After the comedian Seth Rogen made anti-Trump jokes<\/a> at an event last year, Ms. Gilbert-Soto was incensed and complained to other guests, one attendee said. She declined an interview request.<\/p>\n Ms. Gilbert-Soto\u2019s ability to work herself into rooms with powerful people and her influence with Mr. Brin have amused some of his peers in Silicon Valley and inside Google (he remains on the board of its parent company, Alphabet).<\/p>\n In December, she accompanied Mr. Brin to Florida to meet the conservative podcaster Ben Shapiro at his studio. She has traveled with him several times to see Mr. Trump at Mar-a-Lago or the White House<\/a> \u2014 and prolifically detailed their visits on social media.<\/p>\n During the presidential transition, Ms. Gilbert-Soto attended an intimate, four-person dinner at Mar-a-Lago<\/a> with Mr. Trump, Mr. Brin and Sundar Pichai, Google\u2019s chief executive. \u201cAwesome night,\u201d she wrote<\/a> afterward on Instagram.<\/p>\n After attending Mr. Trump\u2019s inauguration, where she and Mr. Brin had prime seating, she wrote in an Instagram story: \u201cMucho gratitude for my lovey, as without him I wouldn\u2019t know the president or have even been at the inauguration.\u201d<\/p>\n In another Instagram story, she criticized YouTube \u2014 which is owned by Google \u2014 over its suspension of Mr. Trump\u2019s account after the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol. \u201cThis kind of censorship<\/a> was an abomination,\u201d she wrote.<\/p>\n She was one of just four partners of tech leaders who attended a high-wattage dinner about artificial intelligence last September at the White House. Ms. Gilbert-Soto sat next to Tim Cook, the Apple chief executive, and across from Mr. Trump, who gave her a shout-out as Mr. Brin\u2019s \u201creally wonderful MAGA girlfriend.\u201d<\/p>\n Fighting a Billionaire Tax<\/p>\n Mr. Brin\u2019s disillusionment with his longtime home state, and its push to make billionaires pay more in taxes, have jolted him out of his political slumber. Mr. Brin, who is Jewish, has also been perturbed by what he sees as the leftward drift of the Democratic Party, particularly on Israel<\/a>.<\/p>\n California was once \u201cvery freeing and liberating in thought,\u201d Mr. Brin, a Stanford Ph.D. dropout, said in an interview<\/a> on campus in December, but he added that the state was \u201cgetting away\u201d from its ideological roots.<\/p>\n Late last year, he started to organize California billionaires who were fuming in group chats on Signal and WhatsApp about the potential tax on their wealth. He called some of them to drum up support, told aides in his family office to draw up plans to defeat the tax and created two nonprofit groups to push his agenda.<\/p>\n He peppered California political operatives with inside-baseball questions about the state\u2019s peculiar signature collection process to place a measure on the ballot. He dined with candidates and joined campaign briefings.<\/p>\n Crucially, he backed up the talk with money, putting $57 million over the last four months into one of the nonprofit groups, Building a Better California.<\/p>\n The group insists it is not focused on the wealth tax. But in communications to donors seen by The Times, the group has explicitly said it offers both \u201cthe near-term and longer-term protection against wasteful government spending and any and all new taxes on personal property and personal assets.\u201d<\/p>\n Backing a Republican for Governor<\/p>\n Mr. Brin has also tried to help decide the successor to Mr. Newsom, a Democrat who is term-limited.<\/p>\n In March, Mr. Brin donated $1 million to a group supporting Mayor Matt Mahan of San Jose, a moderate Democrat running for governor with backing from the tech industry.<\/p>\n A few days after the donation became public, Mr. Mahan \u2014 then desperate for cash \u2014 scrambled his schedule and flew to the Lake Tahoe area for dinner with Mr. Brin and Ms. Gilbert-Soto, according to three people with knowledge of the matter. Mr. Mahan and his campaign chairman, Joe Green, hitched a ride on the private plane of one of Mr. Brin\u2019s friends, the tech executive Ritankar Das, who joined the dinner.<\/p>\n At Mr. Brin\u2019s home overlooking Lake Tahoe, Mr. Mahan tried to impress the billionaire. His inner circle expected more donations to flow. But Mr. Brin did not continue giving.<\/p>\n In late March, Mr. Mahan attended a \u201cNo Kings\u201d rally \u2014 and Ms. Gilbert-Soto was upset. She has turned deeply critical of Mr. Mahan. \u201cHe is woke and he sucks,\u201d she wrote<\/a> this month on X. \u201cPersonality of a wooden spoon. Boring.\u201d<\/p>\n Ms. Gilbert-Soto has been promoting a different candidate for governor: Steve Hilton, a Republican former Fox News host endorsed by Mr. Trump. Mr. Brin gave about $40,000 to back Mr. Hilton, whom he has long known because the candidate\u2019s wife is a former Google executive.<\/p>\n Mr. Hilton said Mr. Brin made the donation after the billionaire reached out to him for a phone call.<\/p>\n \u201cI laid out my plans for how I think that we need to go in a different direction in California,\u201d Mr. Hilton said. \u201cAnd he seemed to agree with much of that \u2014 not necessarily all of it \u2014 but enough to support my campaign financially, which I hugely appreciated.\u201d<\/p>\n The two men now text occasionally, Mr. Hilton said, and he and his wife had a meal at Mr. Brin and Ms. Gilbert-Soto\u2019s home in California this month.<\/p>\n A Billionaire-Led Political Operation<\/p>\n Mr. Brin and his advisers are getting a crash course in politics as they try to stop the billionaires tax.<\/p>\n The head of Mr. Brin\u2019s family office, George Pavlov, is racing to learn campaign finance as he quarterbacks the billionaire\u2019s efforts, fielding inquiries from candidates in California and soliciting donations for Mr. Brin\u2019s group opposing the billionaire tax.<\/p>\n Another adviser is the famous investor and longtime Alphabet board member John Doerr. Mr. Doerr has played a major behind-the-scenes role with Building a Better California, soliciting contributions from fellow billionaires, according to three people briefed on the talks, and Mr. Doerr himself has given the group $10 million.<\/p>\n That group quickly enlisted Ned Wigglesworth, an experienced California ballot initiative consultant. He devised a strategy of pushing three other ballot measures that would compete against the measure for the billionaire tax, in part to challenge the tax on policy grounds and in part to make it costlier to get on the ballot.<\/p>\n Mr. Brin\u2019s donations have been channeled through two dark-money groups he started, including Compass4, a Nevada-based one he created in February to focus on affordability and election advocacy.<\/p>\n In group texts and one-on-one phone calls, Mr. Brin has recruited peers to join Building a Better California. Silicon Valley billionaires have worked themselves into a frenzy about the proposed tax in recent months, floating ideas in group chats like buying signature collection firms, starting escrow accounts<\/a> and funding influencer marketing, all to the chagrin of the state\u2019s operative class.<\/p>\n A total of $93 million was raised from billionaires including the former Google board member Michael Moritz, the former Google chief executive Eric Schmidt and Mr. Larsen, the billionaire. Operatives sought to recruit big names to give the group instant credibility, and some of those billionaires gave money precisely to stand with Mr. Brin.<\/p>\n Kate Conger<\/p>\n Technology reporter<\/p>\n I report on the tech industry for The Times, and lately, Teddy and I have been writing a lot about industry leaders immersing themselves in politics \u2014 often with a rightward tilt. While some, like Elon Musk, have engaged on a federal level, Sergey Brin has focused his efforts on California. The state will likely be a proving ground for how effective his political giving and activism can be, and I’m interested to see how the election results impact him.<\/p>\n![\"\"\/](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/cropped-f00661f2e876c35bf10ff606fa3ca28a917d023d288018f7370fbe631a29bc9679098867.png\")
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