San Francisco has spent years trying to recover from the pandemic-era exodus that emptied offices, battered downtown businesses, and sent parts of its housing market into a slump. But now the city has a very different problem: The AI boom is bringing workers, money, and demand for housing faster than the market can absorb them. OpenAI and Anthropic have dramatically expanded their footprints in the city. The two companies have each leased roughly 1 million square feet of office space over the past two years. OpenAI is now the city’s second-largest office tenant behind Google, while Anthropic ranks fourth. The move-ins from these companies are bringing jobs—and in turn, workers—to the city. According to data from Comprehensive.io, a website that tracks tech jobs, San Francisco makes up over 40% of all AI-related open job positions in the U.S. The result is a market increasingly split between people getting extraordinarily rich from AI and everyone else trying to find somewhere to live. Average asking rents in the San Francisco metropolitan area have climbed more than $1,000 since last year to $4,600 a month, according to Zillow Rentals Data. This has pushed San Francisco above New York as the most expensive major rental market in the country, according to TurboTenant. The vacancy rate has fallen to roughly 3.7% according to real-estate company Avison Young, while competition for apartments in desirable neighborhoods has become intense. Read more [paywall removed for Redditors]: https://fortune.com/article/ai-boom-san-francisco-tech-bros-six-figures-housing-08-10-2026/ submitted by /u/fortune
Originally posted by u/fortune on r/ArtificialInteligence