OpenAI Leases San Francisco Workplace Area Because the Metropolis Seems to Woo AI Corporations

OpenAI is moving into a pair of San Francisco buildings that once housed Uber workers after its founder Sam Altman called a remote work experiment one of the tech industry’s worst mistakes.

Earlier this week the company signed a lease on two buildings owned by Uber, securing 486,600 square feet, Fortune reported Saturday.

In May, Altman said the flirtation with working from home is “over,” and said that startups like his are most efficient when people work together from an office, according to Fortune.

(Research on remote work is so far inconclusive on the efficiency and productivity or remote workers.)

Sam Altman is leasing office space for OpenAI in San Francisco months after he said workers are more efficient when they work together in person.Jack Guez/AFP via Getty Images

The lease is the second largest in San Francisco since 2018 and comes at a time when work-from-home trends have emptied out office buildings in the West Coast city.

The office vacancy rate in the City by the Bay is still more than 33%, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

Businesses have closed in once-thriving San Francisco neighborhoods, and certain types of property crime have skyrocketed in recent years, even as the city is statistically safer than major cities like Houston and Seattle.

The cycle of rising property crime and shuttered restaurants and retail stores have created worries about a downward economic spiral.

Now the city’s landlords are looking to the burgeoning AI industry to bail them out.

Companies like Adept AI, which recently leased 35,000 square feet of space in a former recycling facility, are moving to San Francisco.

Landlords are even offering incentives to entice artificial intelligence companies to the city, which was once known as a tech hub.

It remains to be seen if AI companies can revitalize California’s fourth-largest city.