Open AI — the company responsible for ChatGPT and DALL-E— is close to signing a dealto sublease Uber’s offices on Third Street — around 445,000 square feet total.
Open AI has often been cited as the “poster child” for the AI boom since its beginnings as a non-profit in 2015 — and its subsequent shift to a for-profit company in 2018. At the beginning of this year, the company received an additional $10 billion-dollar boost in funding from Microsoft.
Anthropic — another fast-growing AI company, started by former Open AI employees — also recently signed a lease of the former Slack headquarters at 500 Howard, a Transbay property in downtown San Francisco. Salesforce owns Slack, and is an Anthropic funder, along with Amazon.
Data released last month shows San Francisco with a 34 percent vacancy rate in downtown real estate.
The impact of these new leases could be significant, supporting Mayor London Breed’s statement that San Francisco is the quote “AI capital of the world.”
As of last month, real estate brokerage CBRE estimated 30 million square feet of unleased office space downtown. That’s about a third of available office space, currently empty.
