its website<\/a> said.<\/p>\nSofie Bukovska, 26, who works at the A.I. film production company Trippy Pictures, moved into AGI House last year for a few months and said she had quickly realized how helpful it was to her career. She met A.I. executives and personalities, including Grimes, whom she probably wouldn\u2019t have otherwise, she said.<\/p>\n
The atmosphere \u201cwas something very different from normal life,\u201d Ms. Bukovska said.<\/p>\n
Rocky Yu, a venture capitalist who has managed AGI House since 2023, has tried to curb the partying, he has claimed in court documents. Reached by phone, he said he was not aware of any police reports and declined to answer questions.<\/p>\n
The mansion, which is connected to a venture capital fund, is backed by Eric Schmidt, the former Google chief executive, and Marc Andreessen, the venture capitalist, according to its website. A representative for Mr. Andreessen said he was not involved.<\/p>\n
The 18,000-square-foot property has become such a center of gravity for the A.I. industry that Mr. Yu and a former manager are embroiled in a court battle over who owns the rights to the AGI House brand. The home has become emblematic of the behind-the-scenes issues \u2014 often not publicly discussed \u2014 that group houses face.<\/p>\n
\u2018An Epic Experiment\u2019<\/p>\n
AGI House\u2019s roots trace back to Jeremy Nixon, 33, a former Google researcher who established other tech group homes before the A.I. boom. One that he co-founded around 2019 at a five-bedroom house in San Francisco was called Genesis.<\/p>\n
Genesis was \u201can oasis for founders and dreamers,\u201d according to its website, offering \u201ca dynamic and inclusive environment that promotes personal and professional growth.\u201d<\/p>\n
The house quickly became a hub for events. Eric Zhu, 19, a tech entrepreneur, said he used to sneak into parties there when he was about 13. No one checked anyone\u2019s age, he said, and \u201cit was pretty crazy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yehong Zhu, 30, who is not related to Mr. Zhu, filed a police report accusing a former Genesis house member of rape and assault in December 2021, according to a copy of the report. She has lived in four tech houses and initially viewed them almost as utopias where she could quickly meet other entrepreneurs, she said, before seeing a darker side.<\/p>\n
Ms. Zhu\u2019s case remains under investigation. The Genesis resident she accused has left the house and cannot be located, she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m far from the only one this has happened to,\u201d said Ms. Zhu, the founder of an A.I. start-up called Zette.<\/p>\n
Mr. Nixon flouted the lease terms for the home by letting a string of people come and go, according to his former landlord, Mei Chiao. Genesis ended around 2021, with Mr. Nixon and his roommates leaving behind more than $60,000 of damage, Ms. Chiao said. In 2023, she sued Mr. Nixon and another Genesis house manager in San Francisco Superior Court for more than $9,000 in unpaid rent, recouping about $5,000, according to court records and Ms. Chiao.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a nightmare for me,\u201d Ms. Chiao said. Mr. Nixon declined to comment.<\/p>\n
In 2022, Mr. Nixon rented a mansion in Hillsborough to create a new tech community, NeoGenesis, with Andrej Karpathy, an OpenAI co-founder, court records show. Mr. Karpathy said in an email that he had paid \u201ca chunk of the rent\u201d during the house\u2019s first year and attended a few events, but had not visited for years.<\/p>\n
Mr. Nixon wanted NeoGenesis to be \u201ca community house and space for some of the most exceptional founders, researchers, scientists and technologists,\u201d according to court documents. It would be \u201can epic experiment,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n
Unlike other group houses where rent was cheap, NeoGenesis residents paid up to $10,000 a month for a room, people who lived there said.<\/p>\n
Many were there for the connections. Mr. Nixon threw lavish events, including the \u201cMidnight in Paris\u201d party and an event honoring the future with the flying car. A-list techies including Mr. Brin sometimes showed up.<\/p>\n
With little parking, event attendees often left their cars all over town. Music sometimes blasted all day and night. Neighbors complained to the Hillsborough police and other town officials, police and court records show.<\/p>\n
After OpenAI released ChatGPT in 2022, Mr. Nixon said, he hatched the idea to rebrand NeoGenesis as AGI House, according to a lawsuit he filed last year in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California against Mr. Yu, the current manager.<\/p>\n
Mr. Nixon said he planned to make AGI House even bigger. His concept involved \u201c20 A.I. hackers, living in the same epic house for three months, 20 weekend hackathons, daily dinners with A.I. royalty, ship code again and again and again,\u201d according to Mr. Nixon\u2019s notes, which were released in court.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a new golden age,\u201d Mr. Nixon said, according to the court documents. <\/p>\n
Mr. Yu, 43, a venture capitalist, contended in his own lawsuit last year that he had birthed the AGI House concept. Mr. Nixon could not keep up with house payments for NeoGenesis or with complaints from the town, said Mr. Yu, who took over the home.<\/p>\n
Mermaids in the Pool<\/p>\n
NeoGenesis was rebranded as AGI House in 2023, with Mr. Yu as the manager, according to court records.<\/p>\n
Mr. Nixon returned to San Francisco, opening another group home in 2024, called AGI House SF, according to court records. The seven-bedroom property calls its residents \u201cthe PayPal Mafia of A.I.,\u201d referring to the group of influential founders, including Peter Thiel and Mr. Musk, who helped found the payments company. AGI House SF\u2019s residents have founded 13 companies valued at more than $1 billion, according to its website.<\/p>\n
At AGI House in Hillsborough, Mr. Yu hired a manager to oversee residents and formed a venture capital firm, AGI House Ventures. He enticed Anthropic and OpenAI to co-host hackathons at the mansion and invited top executives to sponsor events, Mr. Yu said in court documents.<\/p>\n
As the home\u2019s profile rose, the police logged at least eight incidents there in 2023 and 2024 related to noise and crowding of residential streets. In November 2023, Hillsborough\u2019s city manager sent a cease-and-desist letter to Mr. Yu warning him that his parties put him in danger of violating the town codes restricting commercial activity.<\/p>\n
\u201cYour events have become much more frequent, often several per week,\u201d the letter said.<\/p>\n
Less than two miles away, Hillsborough officials were dealing with another party house for the A.I industry: a 6,000-square-foot home run by Jimmy Chen, who goes by the social media handle \u201cSpice King of Zanzibar.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr. Chen threw elaborate functions, including one event where women waded into the pool dressed as mermaids. Another party had a jungle theme that included a wall painted with a Mayan mural, according to police records and attendees.<\/p>\n
More than 20 complaints about the house were recorded by the police between late 2021 and 2024, mostly related to noise and parking. One report also noted a \u201cpossible kidnapping\u201d; another said Mr. Chen had been beaten up at an event.<\/p>\n
By last year, Mr. Chen had moved out and the house was destroyed, the landlord, Lena Chedid, claimed in a police report. The crystals adorning a chandelier had been replaced by plastic ones, the report said, with soundproof panels installed everywhere and lightbulbs painted in different colors \u201cdepending on tenants\u2019 party theme.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cA professional company needed to spray the entire house as it was found to be infested with rodents,\u201d Ms. Chedid wrote in the report. She declined to comment.<\/p>\n
Mr. Chen said that his landlord had been aware the house was used for events and that he had paid a damage deposit. He said he had also hired security guards and screened party attendees.<\/p>\n
Any issues were the result of normal wear and tear, he said, adding that the rats were there when he moved in.<\/p>\n
Climbing Over the Gate<\/p>\n
In December, a call came into Hillsborough\u2019s police station at 2:22 a.m. A woman, who was riding in a Lyft at the time, was on the line. She said she had been trapped at AGI House by a male resident who tried to coerce her to have sex.<\/p>\n
The man told her that she was old and \u201cwould be alone forever,\u201d according to a police report. He was \u201cpersistent in attempting to convince\u201d the woman \u201cto have sex with him, and she repeatedly declined,\u201d said the report, which redacted both names.<\/p>\n
The woman climbed over a gate and got away unharmed, the report said.<\/p>\n
That came on top of a pile of other incidents. In June 2025, the police arrived at AGI House after someone called with concerns about a male resident, police records show. About three weeks later, they were called again for another welfare check. By November, the police had also sent an ambulance to the house.<\/p>\n
In his lawsuit against Mr. Nixon, Mr. Yu said he had \u201cgone to great lengths\u201d to distance himself and AGI House from the \u201cparty house image.\u201d In a follow-up email, he said AGI House was not a hacker house as it did not offer an official \u201cresidency\u201d program.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The eight-bedroom Mediterranean-style mansion, which borders a golf course in the wealthy Silicon Valley town of Hillsborough, Calif.,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":353948,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[95562,66,83490,132032,2051,132034,95559,83775,9,11,10,90616,84479,104,578,52065,98832,87267,100535,83491,132033],"class_list":["post-353947","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-agi-house-labs-inc","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-brin","tag-chen","tag-computers-and-the-internet","tag-hillsborough-calif","tag-jeremy-1993","tag-jimmy","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-nixon","tag-parties-social","tag-police","tag-real-estate-and-housing-residential","tag-renting-and-leasing-real-estate","tag-rocky","tag-san-francisco-calif","tag-san-francisco-bay-area-calif","tag-sergey","tag-yu"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353947","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=353947"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353947\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/353948"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=353947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=353947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=353947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}