On a tree-lined street in San Francisco's affluent Duboce Triangle neighbourhood, the top half of a white, Edwardian-era detached house was drawing prospective buyers. The opulently renovated three-bedroom apartment was on the market for almost $3m (£2.3m) – and the seller would consider shares in artificial intelligence companies OpenAI or Anthropic instead of cash.
A young OpenAI employee who viewed the flat with his partner admitted the value was questionable but said he wanted to buy. The worker, who moved to the city two years ago for a technical job, is currently renting and plans to ask his bosses about the stock transfer possibility.
“San Francisco's median house price hits record $1.76m as AI workers' wealth drives market, with sellers accepting shares in OpenAI or Anthropic.”
San Francisco – ground zero for the AI revolution and home to AI giants OpenAI and Anthropic – has seen property prices rise dramatically this year. In March, it regained its title as the most expensive city for homebuyers in the US, overtaking San Jose, 50 miles to the south in the heart of traditional Silicon Valley.
According to data from real estate company Redfin, the median sale price in San Francisco is now a record high of $1.76m, compared with nearly $400,000 for the US as a whole. In March, the median price rose 19% year on year, and that trend continued with increases of 14.5% in April and 14.1% in May. Nationally, prices rose just 1.4% in March, and 2% in both April and May.
Daryl Fairweather, Redfin's chief economist, described the prices as "astronomical". She said people are "flush with cash and ready to buy". Fairweather said the prevailing view is that AI money is the driver, a conclusion based on data and reports from agents. She highlighted steep price jumps in luxury zip codes across the San Francisco Bay Area since OpenAI launched ChatGPT in late 2022 – a trend absent in cities with less AI wealth.
The surge has halted the downturn that San Francisco saw during the Covid pandemic, when the population fell and house prices softened. Today, high salaries and signing bonuses paid to top AI staff can be extraordinary even by Silicon Valley standards, but stock options are even more generous.
