California voters have rejected Proposition 40, the state’s proposed one-time tax on billionaires, the Associated Press reported Monday. The measure failed after an expensive campaign that pitted labor unions against some of tech’s wealthiest figures. It was also opposed by Gov. Gavin Newsom.

Nic Carter lives about as far from Silicon Valley as you can get within the continental U.S. but his feelings about California’s proposed tax on billionaires couldn’t have been stronger.

Carter, a Floridian, and a general partner at the crypto-focused venture capital firm Castle Island Ventures, told TechCrunch before the vote that he thought the proposal — it was on the ballot during California’s midterm election last week — would actually have been a huge win for more fiscally conservative states like his own.

“I think it’d be it would be great for Florida and Texas if these kinds of taxes pass,” Carter said last week. “I think it’s a shame, frankly, that California has this sort of semi-monopoly on capital formation, and that it’s being squandered by local governance that’s super dysfunctional.”

Proposition 40, otherwise known as the California “billionaire’s tax,” was a ballot measure that proposed the creation of a special one-time 5% wealth tax to be levied against state residents with a net worth of more than $1 billion. The tax, which would have been applied retroactively to anyone who was residing in California on January 1, 2026, would have been used to fund a number of public programs — most notably Medi-Cal, the state’s Medicaid program that provides healthcare to qualifying low-income residents.

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