$800 million and nothing to show: How activists derailed Silicon Valley billionaires’ dream city

Plans for a utopia in Solano County, California, were temporarily scuttled after community advocates pushed back against the project. It’s a rare instance of tech titans not getting their way.

In a 2017, billionaire venture capitalist Michael Moritz had a pitch for potential investors: Put your money into a plan to build a brand new city in Solano County, about 60 miles northeast of San Francisco, and reap the profits once the project breaks ground. “If the plans materialize anywhere close to what is being contemplated, this should be a spectacular investment,” he wrote in a note at the time. His idea clearly struck a chord: Big tech players like Marc Andreessen, LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman, and Laurene Powell Jobs eventually backed the plan, spending some $800 million to buy up over 60,000 acres across the county. They would eventually dub their project California Forever.