New York and Texas are billionaire hubs, but no state has more members of the Forbes list than California.
F
or all the talk about business-types leaving California, the Golden State is still home to the most billionaires in the U.S.
According to Forbes’ 2022 World’s Billionaires list, 186 billionaires live in California, down from 189 a year ago, but far more than any other state, even New York (135 billionaire residents) and Texas (67).
The small decline is due to a few high profile billionaires who did indeed move out of the state: Luminar founder Austin Russell, private equity executive Orlando Bravo and Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield. Russell and Bravo decamped to Florida, while Butterfield went to Colorado.
Why does California reign supreme? Thank the booming technology industry. Almost half of the state’s billionaires come from tech. Much of that wealth is concentrated in the San Francisco Bay Area, where 116 of the state’s billionaires reside. That includes the state’s richest residents: Google cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Sixty-seven billionaires live in Southern California, including 45 in Los Angeles, newcomer Rihanna and Snapchat founder Evan Spiegel.
After tech, 22% of California’s billionaires come from finance and investments, including brokerage billionaire Charles Schwab and Peter Thiel, and 7% hail from fashion and retail, including Fashion Nova founder Richard Saghian and the Fisher family, who own clothing retailer Gap. Notable newcomers to the list who call California home: Brex founders Henrique Dubugras and Pedro Franceschi, who moved from San Francisco to Los Angeles last year, and Grammarly founder Max Lytvyn.
Editor's note: An earlier version of this article incorrectly said that Dropbox CEO Drew Houston moved to Austin, Texas. He split his time between Austin and San Francisco early in the pandemic, but still resides in San Fransisco.
Here are the 20 richest people in California:
Net worths are as of March 11, 2022.
