Top 20 most influential players in California tech

Politico

09-04-2025

SAN FRANCISCO —
The birthplace of Big Tech is at a crossroads.
Never has California seen so many business leaders from its own backyard playing such a crucial role in shaping national — and international — policies, all while competing to see which of their inventions take off. Yet that also creates tension within a state where influential labor leaders, privacy advocates and mental health experts warn of the potential risks of letting innovations advance untethered.
As a first-mover on AI laws and the only state with a dedicated privacy agency, California must decide how to continue to cement its unique position as both a pioneer of the cutting-edge technology that fuels its economy, and the guardrails that keep it in check.
The people on this list could either foster — or foil — those efforts.
It includes rule-makers seeking to define the principles of an ever-changing game; disruptors attempting to upend the status quo; watchdogs sounding the alarm over the social consequences of technology; influencers working overtly or behind-the-scenes to make an impact from the outside; and spenders, whose deep pockets or well-connected organizations move the needle through significant funds.
While not exhaustive, this list aims to paint a picture of the broad range of players who help to define the politics and policy of the tech world in the state where it continues to evolve.
With Silicon Valley's standing in Sacramento in flux
in recent years
, Newsom's importance to the industry has only grown. A former San Francisco mayor with longstanding
personal ties
to prominent CEOs and investors, Newsom is an
innovation enthusiast
with an abiding belief that California's competitive edge — and its tax receipts — depend on a thriving Silicon Valley. These days, if tech wants a
major bill stopped
, Newsom is
often their best bet
: The threat of his veto has shadowed major debates over
artificial intelligence
and
autonomous vehicles
last year.
Newsom's tech-friendliness is all the more important in contrast to the increasingly aggressive stance taken by other California politicos. Legislative Democrats and their allies in organized labor have come to see major tech firms as bad actors who
undermine stable jobs
and
endanger kids online
. Their combative approach has produced a flurry of bills to rein in tech as companies increasingly plunge into ballot fights and
legislative races
.
— Jeremy B. White
The detail-oriented East Bay Democrat and environmental attorney of more than a decade oversees many of the Legislature's most ambitious tech regulations as chair of the Assembly Privacy and Consumer Protection Committee. That's given her broad authority, which she's wielded to bolster reproductive health privacy and restrict companies from
using AI to exploit deceased actors' digital likenesses
. She literally defined AI in California — legally speaking, at least, through
a law passed in 2024
.
Still, some of her more ambitious proposals, like her push to prohibit 'algorithmic discrimination,' have failed to make it over the finish line. Bauer-Kahan, undeterred, is putting her influence to the test again this year with
high-profile efforts
to slap tobacco-style health warning labels on social media and identify copyrighted works used to train AI.
— Tyler Katzenberger
San Francisco's state senator has made a name for himself in Sacramento with his willingness to take on major tech issues, from
net neutrality
to AI regulation. Wiener's legislative efforts do not shy away from controversy and
aren't always successful
, like an AI safety bill last year that grabbed national attention — and opposition from Democratic leaders like Nancy Pelosi.
Win or lose, the senator has a way of pushing the conversation forward, including through his influential roles chairing both the Senate Budget and Fiscal Review and Legislative Ethics committees as well as with his measures on housing, public transit and LGBTQ rights. Wiener is
willing to engage critics and supporters alike
, and has picked up where he left off on his AI safety bill, SB 1047, which Newsom vetoed last year. While Wiener has scaled back his ambitious AI bill from last year, the tech industry is still watching closely to see where his latest efforts will go.
— Chase DiFeliciantonio
The Oakland Democrat and former Obama staffer has wide-reaching power to kill or advance bills as the Assembly Appropriations Chair. She's leveraged that authority to shepherd through ambitious measures, like a
landmark newsroom funding deal with Google
, and the nation's first social media law requiring companies to take users' age into account, passed in 2022.
Some of her efforts have attracted the ire of Big Tech, including the social media law, which is
still facing an ongoing legal challenge
in court over First Amendment complaints.
But Wicks hasn't let up. She's now pushing new online safety measures like age verification for app downloads, plus bills on AI watermarking and quantum computing. And never doubt her commitment to the grind: Wicks went viral in 2020 for
showing up to vote with her newborn child
after being denied a proxy.
—
Tyler Katzenberger
How best to describe California's relationship with clean car entrepreneur turned MAGA paragon Elon Musk? In a word:
it's complicated
.
Tesla's success has both buoyed California's climate agenda and rested on billions of dollars in
state subsidies
. Its Fremont plant has generated manufacturing jobs and spurred clashes over
Covid-19 restrictions
and
labor practices
. His rocket company SpaceX is nurturing California's aerospace industry and fomenting
strife with a coastal regulator
.
After enjoying years of attention from California Democrats —
Newsom in particular
— Musk's conversion to Trump loyalist has made him anathema to liberals as he leads DOGE's cost-slashing crusades while fomenting fights over the state's policies on immigrants,
AI deepfakes
and
transgender people
. Electric cars are indispensable to California's climate goals,but many California politicians wish they could dispense with Musk.
— Jeremy B. White
As president and CEO of the famed startup accelerator Y Combinator, Tan
coined the term
'Little Tech' to describe the scrappier, startup-driven side of the industry that's increasingly asserting itself in policy debates.
In the past year, Tan has gone from a San Francisco Democrat to one of the most recognizable Silicon Valley figures lobbying Washington, particularly on issues of AI and antitrust. Under his watch, Y Combinator has pushed the line that good policy should promote innovation, stand up to Big Tech's deep pockets and avoid kneecapping the startups trying to compete.
His group
waded into
Sacramento's fight last year over AI safety, and Tan
raged against
a proposed California law that would have banned after-work communications. He's equally active in San Francisco — mixing political donations with
pointed X commentary
on the city's future, while encouraging other tech leaders to get more involved, framing civic engagement as just another kind of systems design.
— Christine Mui
From his perch at one of the most influential venture capital firms, Andreessen has poured billions into the AI boom and lobbed takes on everything from climate change to AI risk, often with the air of an above-the-fray oracle who thinks government mostly gets in the way. His widely circulated
techno-optimist manifesto
staked out a political identity that is hyper-bullish on emerging technology, deeply skeptical of regulation and openly dismissive of caution. You can hear less aggressive echoes of that worldview in the way some state officials and Sacramento lawmakers discuss AI, not wanting to stifle California's innovation.
Andreessen was a major contributor to Fairshake PAC's crusade to oust crypto-skeptic candidates in California, including Democratic Rep. Katie Porter — a populist whose viral takedowns of corporate execs clashed with Andreessen's techno-utopian ideology. His firm a16z jumped into the tech world's backlash against SB 1047,
even launching a website
to sound the alarm on its potential to chill investment and smother the open-source startup scene. Andreessen personally
used his mic
at an event to slam the legislation as Orwellian.
He's now among the faces of the
so-called tech right
, a movement of VCs and company leaders openly aligning with Trump policies and rejecting the old liberal consensus that once dominated the Valley.
— Christine Mui
Kemp is the newly minted (and second-ever) leader of America's only dedicated privacy rights enforcement agency since its creation in 2020. His arrival as top privacy cop comes at a critical moment for the CPPA: Republicans in Washington — and
even some traditionally tech-skeptical EU leaders in Brussels
— are on a deregulation kick, right as the agency ramps up investigations of businesses accused of violating California's privacy laws.
The CPPA also has five board members: Drew Liebert, Alastair MacTaggart, Brandie Nonnecke, Jennifer Urban and Jeffrey Worthe. They wield broad regulatory powers on data privacy but must tread carefully to fend off efforts from Congress to pass a federal law that would undermine their authority. That dynamic already
has the board divided
over how to draft potentially sweeping new rules for automated decision-making in the face of strong backlash from Big Tech.
— Tyler Katzenberger
When it comes to AI technology, autonomous vehicles are where the rubber hits the road. And in California and the Bay Area, Teamsters Joint Council 7 President Peter Finn is the one making sure that doesn't mean his union drivers and workers are put out of business.
Finn rose through the ranks as a member and steward in the union's San Francisco outfit, now leading a combined 18 local unions with 100,000 members across Northern California, the Central Valley and Northern Nevada. His group continues to back measures that would place limits on autonomous delivery trucks and aim to keep union drivers in the cab. Though such efforts haven't always been successful, twice being thwarted by Newsom's veto pen, Finn's persistence has shown up in other ways.
A push to protect his members' jobs at San Francisco's airport
resulted in AVs sticking to carrying passengers and not parcels, and could become a blueprint for the technology expanding statewide, and beyond.
— Chase DiFeliciantonio
Steyer (not to be confused with his younger, billionaire brother and once presidential candidate Tom) is the high-energy founder and CEO of Common Sense Media, a youth-focused media and tech nonprofit. His group is often a launchpad for innovative kids' online safety policy ideas, like California's
first-in-the-nation student data privacy law
passed in 2014. Steyer also plays a major role in supporting other ambitious social media and privacy efforts, having sponsored the Golden State's sweeping 2020 Consumer Privacy Rights Act and Wicks' Age-Appropriate Design Code law
.
Steyer boasts a close relationship with Hillary Clinton and an antagonistic one with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, both of which he's leveraged to spread his argument that Big Tech companies aren't doing enough to fight misinformation and protect young users' mental health on their platforms.
— Tyler Katzenberger
In their own right, Li, Chayes and Cuéllar would each be a force unto themselves in the world of AI policy. When they were
tasked last year by Newsom to produce a roadmap
on how best to regulate the rapidly expanding AI industry, their efforts quickly set the agenda in the technology's home state.
As a co-founder of Stanford's marquee Human-Centered AI lab and a startup founder as CEO of World Labs, Li is a world-renowned expert on not just the inner workings of a complex technology, but its broader societal implications. Often referred to as 'The Godmother of AI,' Li previously served as the chief scientist focused on AI and machine learning at Google Cloud. Her public sector work includes previously advising a governor's commission on the future of work, and the administration of former President Joe Biden.
Chayes is the first dean of the two-year-old UC Berkeley College of Computing, Data Science, and Society, bringing unique industry and academic experience to bear in the policy arena. A longtime researcher at Microsoft, she founded and managed three labs for the computing giant during her more than 20-year career there, focusing on core computing and AI. Chayes was previously a professor of mathematics at UCLA.
Many Californians may recognize Cuéllar as a former justice of the Supreme Court of California and in his current role as president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He has also served three different White House administrations, previously leading Stanford's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. Cuéllar also serves on the boards of Inflection AI and Harvard University.
— Chase DiFeliciantonio
The brother and sister team behind the Claude family of chatbots have been deeply involved in the AI safety agenda since they founded the company in 2021. Both former OpenAI researchers and Bay Area natives, the Amodeis have pushed the technological and policy envelope when it comes to safe, secure and transparent AI systems. They're both regular fixtures at major tech events, from standing onstage with Hillary Clinton at this year's Common Sense summit in San Francisco, to rubbing elbows with foreign leaders at the AI Action Summit in Paris this past February. Their company was also engaged in Wiener's AI safety bill last year, suggesting amendments to strike a balance between industry and safety concerns.
Anthropic was the first to grant the UK's AI Safety Institute early access to one of its models for safety testing, and has committed to safety measures even before the training of new models.
Their different backgrounds in both politics and industry have helped shape their approach to both: Daniela Amodei previously worked for former Rep. Matt Cartwright (D-Pa.) before joining OpenAI and becoming the company's vice president of safety and policy, while Dario Amodei held positions at Baidu and Google before becoming vice president of research at OpenAI.
— Chase DiFeliciantonio
Meta's ace California lobbyist is charged with defending the company from agitated Sacramento lawmakers' barrage of bills aimed at regulating Big Tech firms and social media platforms. But she's more of a ninja than a gunslinger: the well-connected former Democratic operative and state cabinet official leverages her ties to quietly dismantle bills that would tie Meta's platforms, like Facebook and Instagram, in expensive regulatory knots.
Meta has notched plenty of wins with her behind-the-scenes strategy. For example, a 2024 bill from Assemblymember Josh Lowenthal threatening fines of up to $1 million per child for social media platforms that harmed young users
faltered after the Long Beach Democrat was strong-armed into accepting changes
nearly identical to Meta's demands.
She'll likely run the gauntlet again this year against a revived social media harms bill and Bauer-Kahan's proposal to slap 90-second, unskippable warning labels on social media.
— Tyler Katzenberger
Prieto has what every California lobbyist wants: a massive war chest at her command. As Uber's West Coast policy and communications chief, Prieto oversees the company's 'Uber Innovation PAC,'
which had $30 million
to spend on state candidates and ballot measures in the Golden State last year. That money has made Uber (and by extension, Prieto) a massive player in California's political arena with unparalleled reach to fight lawmakers who try to regulate its business model.
So what's Prieto doing with all the money? Uber was a major benefactor for pro-business candidates in last year's legislative campaign, according to state campaign finance records, donating hundreds of thousands of dollars to successful Assembly candidates like Democrat Patrick Ahrens and Republican Steven Choi. The PAC also dropped more than a million dollars countering
labor groups' bid to oust now-former state Sen. Josh Newman
, a moderate Democrat.
And as avid California Playbook readers might have noticed, the company is
running a seven-figure ad campaign
to protest California's mandatory insurance costs for rideshare services — fees it argues benefit predatory injury lawyers while inflating ride prices and eating into drivers' incomes.
— Tyler Katzenberger
The veteran Democratic strategist has spent years helping tech firms navigate the state's bruising policy fights. A former Clinton White House aide and Airbnb's political fixer, Lehane now leads global affairs at OpenAI — where he's applying
his signature blend
of bare-knuckle campaign tactics and insider savvy to steer the company through a rising tide of AI regulation in the states.
In Sacramento, Lehane has emerged as the strategist-in-chief for an industry desperate to shape the rules before they're written. Nowhere is that clearer than in
last summer's fight
over Wiener's landmark AI safety proposal, SB 1047. As lawmakers pushed to impose first-of-their-kind safety mandates on advanced models, Lehane orchestrated a full-court press to
block it
.
At the same time, Lehane has capitalized on a shift in Washington, where the AI conversation has moved from warnings about the technology's risks to bullish talk of dominating the field. OpenAI is now promoting national policy ideas akin to
an industrial strategy
to sustain the growth of American AI — and Lehane has styled himself and his firm as key players in the tech arms race against China.
— Christine Mui
Within the tech industry, the leather-jacketed CEO of chipmaker Nvidia has long been known to draw crowds like no other — but his influence in California's political circles is also growing impossible to ignore. As Nvidia has become the
undisputed kingmaker
in the AI hardware race, Huang has cultivated an image as a visionary technologist whose company holds the keys to the future.
At the federal level, Nvidia's market dominance makes Huang's voice unavoidable in conversations about export controls, national competitiveness and even environmental policy. Behind the scenes, Nvidia has started to
grow its
lobbying footprint
and spend
, while Huang took his first meeting with Trump at the White House in January.
It's in California though where his influence runs deepest, as Sacramento scrambles to respond to both the economic opportunity and geopolitical stakes of AI.
State leaders are eager to cozy up to the industry's rising stars, and Huang is at the top of their list. Nvidia's role as a top employer, source of tax revenue and R&D powerhouse gives it a firm seat at the table. Last year, its blockbuster market performance helped prop up California's budget, earning a shoutout from Newsom in his State of the State address. The two also
inked a first-of-its-kind deal
to ramp up AI education for the state and its community colleges.
— Christine Mui
Benioff's influence is anchored in San Francisco, both literally in terms of its namesake tower and as the CEO of the city's largest private employer. The Bay Area native's roots also run deep, with his grandfather Marvin Lewis serving on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Benioff himself is godfather to one of Newsom's children, and the CEO has been deeply involved in San Francisco politics and philanthropy. He was the
driving force behind San Francisco's Prop C homelessness tax
on big businesses, including his own, and
has given more than $100 million of his multi-billion-dollar fortune
to Bay Area schools.
But Benioff's reach goes beyond the City by the Bay. Salesforce's technology undergirds much of the modern business software on the market, serving as essentially the default customer relationship management program across industries and forming the substrate layer for countless other companies and websites.
— Chase DiFeliciantonio
Another Bay Area native, Conway — and his investments — are hugely responsible for shaping the Silicon Valley startup ecosystem into what it is today. The noted angel investor's career stretches back decades to his time as co-founder of Altos Computer Systems, which he took public in the 1980s.
Conway went on to sink early cash into the likes of Google, Facebook and PayPal and is currently the founder and managing partner at SV Angel, whose portfolio includes Airbnb, Anthropic, Brex and many other companies.
The investor also has close ties to San Francisco politics, working with former Mayor Ed Lee to orchestrate a tax break for what was then Twitter to put down roots in downtown.
Philanthropically, Conway serves on the board of the Salesforce Foundation and is a donor to UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital and UCSF Medical Center, among other causes. He also founded sf.citi to increase the tech community's civic engagement, and FWD.US which advocates for immigration reform.
— Chase DiFeliciantonio
Hoffman helped launch LinkedIn, but these days he's just as focused on launching Democrats. In a state where tech billionaires are picking sides, he's emerged as the consigliere for the industry-friendly wing of the party. As a partner at VC firm Greylock, Hoffman's portfolio is basically a greatest hits of Silicon Valley influence — featuring Airbnb, Facebook and OpenAI — and so is his donor list.
He's quick to cut the first check for anyone pushing his particular brand of tech optimism and has poured millions into super PACs like Future Forward. Hoffman gravitates toward pro-AI, center-left figures who champion pragmatic regulation, casting himself as a foil to both GOP Big Tech-bashing and progressive techlash. He's called for thoughtful guardrails around issues like misinformation and safety, while warning against overly broad or premature rules that could slow progress.
— Christine Mui
Google shattered records in 2024 by spending more on California lobbying than any other company
that summer
and more than it had for the last
20 years combined
— a sign of where the search giant's real policy fights are heading. It poured over $10 million into a single quarter's campaign to kill Wicks' California Journalism Protection Act, a bill that would've forced it to pay news outlets for using their content. Google ultimately struck a side deal with the state to create a taxpayer-funded journalism sustainability fund, dodging the tens of millions in annual payouts the bill could have required.
That eye-popping figure capped a two-year surge in statehouse influence as Google ramped up efforts to fend off not just the CJPA, but also recruited California's small businesses to oppose
data privacy legislation
. Waymo, the self-driving provider owned by Google parent Alphabet, also went on
a pricey San Francisco lobbying blitz
last year to get its robotaxis into the city's airport, parking itself in a standoff with labor unions.
At the center of these efforts is Kent Walker, Alphabet's top legal mind and global policy chief. Walker, a Stanford Law grad and veteran litigator, started his career in the '90s at San Francisco's Howard Rice (now Arnold & Porter). Google's man in Sacramento is Jon Ross, the first outside lobbyist retained by the company way back in 2006 and a partner leading KP Public Affairs' technology practice.
— Christine Mui