Leaving California: Oracle Co-Founder Larry Ellison Announces Move To Hawaii

On Monday, the 11th richest person in the world , Oracle co-Founder Larry Ellison, announced that he has moved out of California, becoming only the latest billionaire to leave Silicon Valley.

In his Monday announcement to employee’s, Ellison confirmed that he moved to the island of Lanai in Hawaii permanently. The billionaire owns around 98% of the property on the island and had been building up hotels and residences for years.

“I’ve received a number of inquiries about whether or not I will be moving to Texas,” said Ellison  in a memo on Monday. “The answer is no. I’ve moved to the State of Hawaii and I’ll be using the power of Zoom to work from the island of Lanai. Mahalo, Larry.”

Ellison, who is worth $75 billion, became only the latest wealthy Californian to leave the state in recent months, following an exodus of other billionaires including Elon Musk, who announced a move to Texas earlier this month.

Ellison’s announcement also only came days after his company, the computer technology firm Oracle, also announced that their headquarters would be moving from Silicon Valley to Austin, Texas.

“It’s not surprising,” San Francisco-based tech lawyer David Singth told the Globe. “Ellison had more and more going on out there for years, and all the recent moves spurred by high taxes and restrictive business practices finally forced him out.

“Like all these moves, it’s not so much hurting California as it is the Bay Area. California gets a small hit, but they still can pool from a big tax base. For the Bay Area, it hurts, especially when you focus on a county or city level. Billionaires are a huge tax base locally, and if they are out, that’s a big gap.”

“Other counties, like LA County and San Diego County, they haven’t had this sort of issue as much because, if as they’ve lost wealthy people moving out of state, their growth happened slower and more gradually, so now people are moving right in to any housing or tax gap spots. And other counties and cities are benefitting too. Sacramento and Stockton are seeing a lot of Bay Area people move out there for affordability, bringing those tax bases out of the Bay.”

“Ellison is just a big example of what’s happening. California is pricing  people out in general, but the Bay Area is not only pricing people out, they aren’t replacing them. This is bad for the region. Really bad.”

Other wealth Californians are reportedly also mulling moves later in 2020 and 2021, with the tech industry itself expected to lose more companies moving out to tax-friendlier states next year as well.