{"id":432074,"date":"2026-05-17T13:53:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-17T13:53:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/432074\/"},"modified":"2026-05-17T13:53:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-17T13:53:10","slug":"i-went-inside-openais-secretive-san-francisco-headquarters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/432074\/","title":{"rendered":"I went inside OpenAI’s secretive San Francisco headquarters"},"content":{"rendered":"

Normally, when I approach the incognito San Francisco headquarters of\u00a0OpenAI<\/a>, a benignly terrifying security guard in a rugby shirt stares me down.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Last week, though, I got to waltz right past him.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Well, almost. Apparently I waltzed a bit prematurely. As I first entered the lobby, he professionally but firmly walked me back outside and showed me how to properly scan a QR code that would grant me access to the beating heart of the buzziest<\/a>, most controversial<\/a> company in tech.<\/p>\n

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After that, the waltzing could continue unimpeded, because I had been formally invited inside OpenAI\u2019s secretive mothership. And what I saw there told me a lot about the company\u2019s future.<\/p>\n

Kimpton\u2019s baby<\/p>\n

I was invited to OpenAI\u2019s headquarters because of my role as a tech journalist, to attend an off-the-record educational seminar.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Thomas<\/p>\n

Thomas Smith in front of the OpenAI building in San Francisco.<\/p>\n

Courtesy of Thomas Smith<\/p>\n

Stepping off the MUNI T Line and arriving at OpenAI\u2019s building, I was greeted, as I always am, by nothing.\u00a0The AI giant\u2019s offices are entirely unlabeled. There\u2019s nary a sign or logo anywhere to tell the casual visitor that they\u2019ve stumbled upon the locus of all AI power in the universe<\/a>.\u00a0Next door, Uber\u2019s headquarters scream \u201cUBER\u201d from every glass-fronted, glimmering surface. OpenAI \u2014 subletting from Uber \u2014 keeps its building silent.<\/p>\n

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That ends as soon as you step inside.<\/p>\n

After signing in with front desk staff (who have the friendly demeanor of people who know they\u2019re being protected by a rugby-shirted man with biceps like tractor tires) I was escorted to a lobby to wait for our session to begin.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

The exterior of a former\u00a0Uber office building with the Uber sign visibly removed, at 1515 Third St., San Francisco, Aug. 20, 2024. Artificial intelligence company OpenAI signed a lease in 2023 to move into the office space.<\/p>\n

Smith Collection\/Gado<\/p>\n

OpenAI\u2019s lobby is loud \u2014 aesthetically, if not aurally. The space looks like a Kimpton hotel and a Victorian cabinet of curiosities had a baby.<\/p>\n

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Every object \u2014 a 1950s metal robot figurine, a copy of Roger Fouts\u2019 \u201cNext of Kin,\u201d a vintage camera \u2014 had clearly been placed there with intention, to communicate a message.<\/p>\n

A copy of \u201cOn the Origin of Time,\u201d which details Stephen Hawking\u2019s theories about the universe, lay open next to comfy reading chairs, as if to suggest that OpenAI\u2019s engineers often casually thumb through such books. For reasons that are opaque to me, a vase of white flowers and also a disembodied deer antler sat beside it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A lone gold pocket watch, sitting nakedly in the middle of a vast wooden table, felt like a test. Grabbing it as a memento seems like it\u2019d be easy, until you remember that it\u2019s sitting in the house of the company building much of America\u2019s AI surveillance apparatus<\/a>.<\/p>\n

After a brief wait, a staff member walked me and several colleagues back to a fairly unremarkable seminar room, somewhat surprising given all the quirky detritus I\u2019d just passed by.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\"Facade<\/p>\n

Facade of OpenAI offices in Mission Bay, San Francisco, Dec. 11, 2025.<\/p>\n

Smith Collection\/Gado<\/p>\n

Also surprisingly, though, OpenAI left us relatively free to wander before the presentation started (albeit with a directive not to photograph anything). So I left the room.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Inside OpenAI\u2019s lobby, I found a concert grand piano. It\u2019s a player piano, and there\u2019s not even a stool for a human musician to sit on. This feels ominously on-brand.<\/p>\n

Deeper in the building, I found a booth filled with themed books and pamphlets that urge the visitor to \u201cFeel the AGI immersion.\u201d It was staffed by a gigantic, papier-mache frog.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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I took a pamphlet. It was covered in vague word soup about human flourishing. I realized ChatGPT almost certainly wrote it.<\/p>\n

In the bathrooms, I found trays of toothbrushes and anti-redness eye drops, presumably to fix yourself up after a long night spent iterating on foundation models.<\/p>\n

\"Facades<\/p>\n

Facades of the offices of artificial intelligence company OpenAI in San Francisco, with view of sky bridges, March 25, 2026.<\/p>\n

Smith Collection\/Gado<\/p>\n

I circled back to the seminar room. A digital sign outside read, \u201cWe\u2019re making\u00a0AGI\u2013and friends!\u201d<\/p>\n

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The gospel of Sam<\/p>\n

For OpenAI, that last bit has proven challenging. The company is facing a massive lawsuit from Elon Musk<\/a> that\u2019s revealing juicy details daily about the company\u2019s origins and leadership. Another suit accuses it of\u00a0wrongful death over ChatGPT\u2019s alleged role in a school shooting<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Amid this onslaught, the company has lately felt walled-off. OpenAI\u2019s building<\/a>, again, is entirely incognito. Reaching an actual human at the company, even as a member of the media, feels almost impossible. Cryptic messages on X from Sam Altman are often the only hint that OpenAI is about to do something big.<\/p>\n

That wasn\u2019t always the case. When I served as an independent OpenAI beta tester in 2021, the company had a chummy, academic lab feel. You could send a Slack DM to OpenAI\u2019s VP of product in the middle of the night and get an immediate response.<\/p>\n

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After ChatGPT took over the world, that vibe changed. OpenAI stepped back and locked down.<\/p>\n

\"Office<\/p>\n

Office buildings of Uber and OpenAI in the Mission Bay neighborhood, San Francisco, Dec. 11, 2025.<\/p>\n

Smith Collection\/Gado<\/p>\n

New models dropped at random times, and both tech journalists and the company\u2019s own customers scrambled to understand what had landed in their laps.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Besides a few high-profile stories \u2014 like the attempted ouster of CEO Sam Altman in 2023<\/a> \u2014 not much happening internally at OpenAI ever made it out to the broader public.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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On my visit, though, I saw indications that OpenAI is working to shift this narrative. That fact that I \u2014 a journalist who once accused the company of lobotomizing ChatGPT<\/a> \u2014 was allowed in the door in the first place is one indicator of a change.<\/p>\n

And while there\u2019s plenty of bizarre kitsch inside OpenAI\u2019s headquarters, the walls are also covered in signs that talk about the company\u2019s origins and future, connecting its work to the artificial intelligence pioneers who came before it (including, encouragingly, early female scientists like Grace Hopper<\/a>) and an imagined future where AGI becomes a utopian \u201cinfrastructure stretched across continents.\u201d<\/p>\n

Facebook famously had an on-site sign shop, too<\/a>. But its blocky, letterpress signs always felt like tech-themed Soviet propaganda posters, sporting simple, vaguely Orwellian slogans like, \u201cDo it faster\u201d and, \u201cOur work is never over.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Facade<\/p>\n

Facade of the offices of artificial intelligence company OpenAI in San Francisco, March 25, 2026.<\/p>\n

Smith Collection\/Gado<\/p>\n

OpenAI\u2019s signs are more deliberately crafted and narrative, with paragraphs of explanatory text, historical photos, charts and illustrations. They look like museum exhibits.<\/p>\n

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\"image\"<\/p>\n

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The company seems to be realizing \u2014 perhaps belatedly \u2014 that if it doesn\u2019t actively tell its story, other people will. And other people\u2019s version won\u2019t necessarily be flattering.<\/p>\n

OpenAI probably isn\u2019t ready to send my rugby-shirted friend home and throw open its doors\u00a0\u2014 or its models\u00a0\u2014 to the world. But the company no longer seems content to sit, walled-off, in its glass-fronted Mission Bay tower either.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Normally, when I approach the incognito San Francisco headquarters of\u00a0OpenAI, a benignly terrifying security guard in a rugby…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":432075,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[365,363,364,111,139,69,199664,220660,188839,145],"class_list":["post-432074","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-sfgfreelance","tag-sfglocal","tag-sfgtech","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432074","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=432074"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432074\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/432075"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=432074"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=432074"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=432074"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}