Google’s parent company Alphabet has reportedly more than quadrupled its office space in Miami this year after co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin bought mansions in the area, fleeing California ahead of a proposed tax on billionaires.
This spring, Alphabet signed a lease to expand its Miami space to about 45,000 square feet, adding to its current 10,000 square-foot satellite office in the city’s financial district, Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the matter.
Page and Brin are the second- and third-richest people in the world, with net worths of $257 billion and $237 billion, respectively, according to Forbes.
Their recent real estate purchases in South Florida helped drive Alphabet’s decision to expand, Bloomberg reported.
Over the past year, Page bought $188 million in Miami real estate, including a $101.5 million estate in the upscale Coconut Grove neighborhood.
Brin snapped up a Miami Beach waterfront home for a cool $51 million.
The billionaire duo represent some of the highest-profile exits from the Golden State ahead of the November midterms, when voters will weigh in on a ballot measure that could impose a one-time 5% tax on those worth over $1 billion.
Page and Brin, who built their fortunes in California after creating Google in 1998 as two Stanford University grad students, started cutting ties with the state earlier this year – terminating or moving several limited liability companies.
Brin and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt have joined forces with some of Silicon Valley’s biggest moguls to create a pro-business organization that is poised to lobby against the billionaire tax.
Page and Brin stepped down from their executive roles in 2019, but they remain on Alphabet’s board and still hold majority voting control.
Even after the expansion, Alphabet’s Miami offices are small compared to the tech giant’s 10 million-square-foot Mountain View, Calif., campus and its 1.7 million square-foot New York City outpost.
But the Miami moves are a sign that wealthy individuals fleeing high-tax states like California and New York aren’t just scooping up property in South Florida — they’re expanding their business presence and potentially boosting the local economy, too.
Other tech bigwigs have made major real estate purchases in the area, including Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg’s record-breaking $170 million purchase of a “billionaire bunker” on a private island near Miami.
Palantir CEO Alex Karp bought a Miami Beach home last year and went on to announce the company was moving its headquarters from Denver, Colo., to Miami.
Before billionaires started leaving California, New Yorkers fled for Florida in droves during the pandemic as they sought safer, cheaper and sunnier lifestyles.
More than 125,000 New Yorkers left for Florida between 2018 and 2022 and took nearly $14 billion in income with them, according to the nonpartisan Citizens Budget Commission.
The Sunshine State netted $20.65 billion in annual adjusted gross income from tax filers who moved between 2019 and 2023 – including $10.5 billion in Greater Miami alone, according to IRS data.
By 2023, the average out-of-state mover arriving in Miami was making $178,382.
Google did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment.
