The moniker developed around 2023, when OpenAI relocated to 1515 Third St in Mission Bay, the neighborhood just south of McCovey Cove, the channel most famous as a landing spot for the home runs of Giants legend Barry Bonds.<\/p>\n
Although divorced from the hubbub of the Financial District, Mission Bay attracted its own share of heavy hitters from the last tech boom. Now, much of that space is occupied by OpenAI<\/a>, which took over nearly a million square feet previously occupied by names such as DropBox, Uber and Old Navy. Companies such as chipmaker Nvidia and crypto-exchange platform Coinbase have also expanded into the neighborhood. While the rest of the city continues to struggle with office vacancy rates, Mission Bay is nearly out of room, according to JLL.<\/p>\n That energy has had a gravitational pull. The University of California San Francisco recently spent nearly a billion dollars to expand its school of dentistry in Mission Bay, and the San Francisco Unified School District is preparing to open Mission Bay Elementary in August, its first new public school in decades.<\/p>\n \u201cThat whole area of the city is up and coming,\u201d said Derek Daniels, San Francisco research lead for Colliers.<\/p>\n Mission Bay\u2019s rise wasn\u2019t random. The San Francisco Giants organization had been eyeing a redevelopment of Mission Rock \u2013 a northern carve out of the Mission Bay neighborhood \u2014 as far back as the early 2000s. The Giants, with developer Tishman Speyer,<\/a> completed the first of the four-phase, 28-acre, $2.5 billion megaproject in 2024. It included two new office towers \u2014 with tenants such as Visa\u2019s global headquarters, the Golden State Warriors and Blue Bottle \u2014 more than 500 housing units, 550,000 square feet of new office space, and 52,000 square feet of retail. Phase 2 doesn\u2019t have a start date, but is slated to begin soon.\u00a0<\/p>\n The effect has spilled into the residential market. The AI Boom has brought a flood of employees making base salaries around $500,000 who want to live near their offices, and the competition for Mission Bay\u2019s apartments and condos has gotten fierce, with bidding wars pushing rents up sometimes by $1,000 or more, and condos going for well above asking price.<\/p>\n \u201cFor apartments, we will email the top five applicants and ask if there is anything else they can provide to help them stand out, and then they just start bidding against each other,\u201d Jezdimirovic said. A recent rental hit the market for $7,890 and eventually leased for $8,700, while a recent three-bedroom rented for $15,000, he said. Over the last 12 months, the median prices for studios in Mission Bay have jumped 37 percent, two-bedrooms jumped 44 percent and one-bedrooms saw a 15 percent rise, according to Zumper.<\/p>\n The median price for a condo rose 13.2 percent over the last year, to $1.2 million, according to Compass. Jezdimirovic expects that number to continue to rise. He recently listed a 970 square-foot, one-bedroom condo for $1.2 million and eventually sold for $150,000 over asking.<\/p>\n \u201cToday is not even comparable to 10 years ago,\u201d Jezdimirovic said of Mission Bay. \u201cEven just within the last two or three years, we\u2019ve finally seen the full establishment of the neighborhood.\u201d<\/p>\n The spillover effect has been dramatic for areas such as Potrero Hill. The neighborhood\u2019s elevated views, easy highway access, and uniquely sunny weather have long made it a desirable landing place for young families. But over the last three years, it\u2019s taken on a new role: as both a hot spot for hacker houses \u2014 homes essentially turned into dorms for tech entrepreneurs to live and work alongside one another\u2014 as well as the migration point for AI employees looking to settle down into family life or quieter living. In other words: Area AI\u2019s suburb.<\/p>\n The median price for a single-family home rose 16 percent over the last year, reaching more than $2 million, according to compass. On average, homes are selling for 42 percent above asking, one of the highest rates of overpay in the city.<\/p>\n Jerry Rice Jr, (yes, son of that Jerry Rice), has worked as an agent in the area for 10 years and said he really began to see it surge around January. The area already has limited supply and few sellers \u2014 only 40 homes sold over the last 12 months \u2014 pressure that Rice said the AI wealth has only exacerbated.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s been hot all year,\u201d Rice said. \u201cIn Potrero Hill, you have all the benefits of the city without living in the city. The clients are largely family-oriented, with AI jobs and have a lot of liquid wealth. We\u2019re seeing big cash offers.\u201d<\/p>\n Rice said the nearby Dogpatch neighborhood, long characterized by warehouses and dilapidated buildings, is going to be the next beneficiary of the Area AI effect. The residential market has already started to creep up. The median price for a condo rose 7.3 percent over the last year, to $1.1 million, and total condo sales are up 15.2 percent, according to Compass.<\/p>\n The blue-chip startup accelerator Y Combinator, once led by OpenAI founder Sam Altman, relocated to the Dogpatch in 2023. Earlier this week, developer Brookfield, who has proposed a mega redevelopment of Pier 70 that would bring about 2 million square feet of commercial space and more than 2,000 new homes, requested adding 600 more units to the plan, bringing the total to 2,750.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cAbout 15 years ago, people told me the Dogpatch was nothing,\u201d Rice said. \u201cThe Dogpatch is going to look totally different in five to 10 years. If I were an investor, I would start looking in that area, because that\u2019s a hidden gem with a lot of upside.\u201d<\/p>\n \tRead more \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t Brookfield ups market-rate unit count, building heights at Pier 70 project<\/p>\n \t\t\t<\/a> \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t OpenAI surges past 1M sf of offices in SF with latest Mission Bay lease<\/p>\n
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n![\"Brookfield's](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Brookfield-Wants-More-Apartments-at-Pier-70-Project--200x133.jpg\")
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n![\"OpenAI's](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/SFO-OpenAI-surges-past-1M-sf-of-offices-in-SF-with-latest-Mission-Bay-lease-MAIN-200x133.jpg\")
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\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Jackson-Square-200x133.jpg\")
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