Tech executive Meg Whitman has sold her 1,500-acre Northern California ranch for a whopping $18.5 million — in yet another potential example of the rich fleeing the state’s proposed “billionaire tax.”
The former CEO of Hewlett-Packard and eBay listed the Spring Creek Ranch near Redding in April. The ranch was just purchased by California investor and conservationist, Kelly J. Barlow.
The ranch is said to be a prime location for trout fishing. Barlow, an enthusiastic fly fisherman, also serves as the board chair for California Trout, a group committed to the enduring protection and restoration of freshwater ecosystems across California.
“Most importantly, unlike most Fall River fishing, fishing is private to the ranch and its guests. The ranch also fronts about a mile of the Fall River, upstream and downstream of the confluence with Spring Creek,” reads the listing on Hall and Hall’s website. The water at the ranch is crystal clear and covers Fall River’s primary spring-fed tributaries, Spring Creek and Lava Creek.
The former U.S. Ambassador to Kenya (2022-2024) has a history of selling high-value real estate. In 2025, Whitman and her husband, neurosurgeon Griffith Rutherford Harsh IV, auctioned off their penthouse at the Kimpton Sawyer Hotel in downtown Sacramento, which fetched approximately $2.4 million.
Whitman ran for the 2010 California gubernational race and lost to Democrat Jerry Brown. She spent a total of $178.5 million, including a record $144 million in self-funding.
Oracle founder Larry Ellison had sold his 11,000-square-foot, five-bedroom San Francisco mansion for $45 million towards the end of 2025 and has been quietly shopping for multimillion-dollar homes in elite Nevada enclaves like Crystal Bay and Incline Village.
A number of uber-rich founders and executives have recently shifted outside of the Golden State to seemingly avoid the proposed “billionaire tax” currently being considered in California. Google co-founder Sergey Brin, Unconventional AI’s Naveen Rao, and SpaceX investor Steve Jurvetson, have all relocated to the Nevada border on Lake Tahoe’s north shore.
The “2026 Billionaire Tax Act,” proposed to be on the ballot in November this year, would impose a one-time 5% tax on the net worth of billionaires in the state. California has over 200 billionaires, who have a collective wealth of more than $2 trillion.
The purpose of the proposed tax is said to be “to protect access to high quality, equitable health care, and to support funding for kindergarten through grade fourteen public education and food assistance programs, by raising revenue from a one-time tax on billionaire wealth.”
