The AI growth is bringing a wave of startups to San Francisco, and staff are receiving beneficiant advantages in one of many nation’s priciest housing markets.
Roy Lee, CEO of AI tech startup Cluely, which makes software program for job interviews and work calls, instructed The New York Occasions that he leased eight residences for workers in a recently-built luxurious complicated located only a one-minute stroll away from the workplace. The rents within the 16-story constructing vary from $3,000 to $12,000 a month.
“Going to the workplace ought to really feel such as you’re strolling to your front room, so we actually, really need individuals shut,” Lee instructed The Occasions on Thursday.
Flo Crivello, CEO of Lindy, one other AI startup, mentioned he provides his roughly 40 staff a $1,000 lease stipend each month in the event that they stay inside a 10-minute stroll of the corporate’s workplace.
“Individuals are a lot happier and more healthy after they stay near work,” he instructed The Occasions. “This makes them stick round for longer, carry out higher and work longer hours.”
The AI growth has drawn a flood of cash and expertise to San Francisco, inflating lease within the course of. The Bay Space has attracted 70% of AI enterprise capital funding nationwide since 2019, in accordance with information from Pitchbook.
Throughout the U.S. and Canada, the pool of tech employees with AI expertise jumped greater than 50% to 517,000 from mid-2024 to mid-2025, in accordance with a September CBRE report. The San Francisco Bay Space, New York metro and Seattle are the highest U.S. markets for AI-specialty expertise, accounting for 35% of the nationwide complete, the report mentioned.
In the meantime, absolutely distant working preparations for open positions have declined, and extra employers are adopting hybrid preparations requiring tech expertise to spend three or extra days within the workplace. In San Francisco alone, 1 out of each 4 sq. ft of workplace house was leased by an AI firm over the past two and a half years, in accordance with CBRE.
Tightness within the workplace market can also be seen within the residential sector. Over the previous yr, condominium costs in San Francisco rose 6%, on common, greater than twice the two.5% enhance skilled in New York Metropolis and the best fee within the nation, in accordance with actual property tracker CoStar information cited by The Occasions. In sizzling spots like Mission Bay, close to OpenAI’s headquarters, rents climbed 13% not too long ago.
Common lease for a San Francisco condominium is now $3,315 a month, slightly below New York Metropolis’s, the nation’s highest at $3,360.
A September report from actual property tech firm Zumper mentioned San Francisco’s housing market bucked the nationwide development of flat or falling costs and as a substitute noticed the strongest annual progress throughout the nation for two-bedroom lease, which surged 17.1%. One-bedroom lease climbed 10.7%, the third-highest enhance within the nation, the report mentioned.
The report factors to a “excellent storm” of tech-sector hiring and stricter return-to-office mandates driving extra renters into town in addition to supply-chain constraints. The town’s emptiness fee has fallen again to pre-pandemic ranges, and new housing building is at its weakest tempo in a decade, the report added.
Will Goodman, a principal at Strada Funding Group, which developed the posh complicated the place Cluely leased its eight residences, instructed The Occasions that half of the 501 items within the complicated have been leased inside two months of its Might opening.
“Actually, I’ve by no means seen something prefer it earlier than,” he mentioned
