On a tree-lined street in San Francisco's affluent Duboce Triangle, the top half of a white Edwardian detached house was drawing prospective buyers. The opulently renovated three-bedroom apartment was on the market for almost $3m (£2.3m). And its seller was offering an unusual payment option: shares in artificial intelligence companies OpenAI or Anthropic instead of cash.
A young OpenAI employee who had just viewed the flat with his partner acknowledged the valuation was questionable but said he would like to buy. The worker, who moved to the city two years ago for a technical job, is currently renting. He plans to ask his bosses about the stock transfer possibility.
“San Francisco house prices hit record $1.76m as AI workers' wealth drives demand, with sellers even accepting AI shares.”
The listing is emblematic of a broader trend gripping San Francisco's property market. In March, the city regained its title as the most expensive for homebuyers in the US, overtaking San Jose. The median house price that month rose 19% year on year, and the surge has continued: 14.5% in April and 14.1% in May, according to data from Redfin. By May 2026, the median sale price hit a record $1.76m – compared with nearly $400,000 for the US as a whole, where prices rose just 1.4% in March and 2% in both April and May.
“They are just astronomical,” said Daryl Fairweather, chief economist at Redfin. “People are flush with cash and ready to buy.” Fairweather said the prevailing view is that AI money is driving the red-hot market. “We have come to that conclusion based on what we're seeing in the data, and what we've heard from our agents.” She pointed to the steep jump in prices in luxury zip codes across the wider San Francisco Bay Area since OpenAI launched ChatGPT in late 2022 – a trend absent in cities with less AI wealth.
The AI-fuelled boom has halted the downturn San Francisco experienced during the Covid pandemic, when the population fell and house prices softened. Today, the high salaries and signing bonuses paid to top AI staff – even more generous stock options – are extraordinary by Silicon Valley standards.