Robotics joins tenant mix

San Francisco’s office recovery was supposed to be an AI story. It still is. But the new tenants are not just model builders and software startups. They are robotics and drone companies that need desks, yes, but also roll-up doors, higher power loads, freight access, room for demos, and enough tolerance for odd uses that a polished tower cannot easily provide. That is why this wave is landing in older buildings and flexible industrial-office hybrids instead of the cleanest trophy space downtown (sfstandard.com, colliers.com). That matters because San Francisco’s broader office market has finally started to move again. Colliers said on April 6 that the city’s office market posted its strongest performance in years, with demand driven largely by AI-focused firms and activity concentrated in premier Class A buildings. Savills reported that Q1 2026 leasing reached 3.8 million square feet, its strongest first quarter since 2014. JLL said availability has fallen by nearly 3 million square feet over the past four quarters. The headline recovery is real. The shape of it is changing (colliers.com, savills.us, jll.com). Robotics helps explain why. Software companies can squeeze into premium floors with views and conference rooms. Robotics companies often cannot. They need places where engineers can assemble hardware, bring in equipment, test machines, and show investors something that physically moves. The Bay Area already has a deep bench of these firms, from autonomous vehicle groups to drone and industrial robotics companies, and Y Combinator’s April 2026 directory alone lists dozens of manufacturing and robotics startups in the region, including several in San Francisco proper (builtinsf.com, ycombinator.com). One company makes the point neatly. Bedrock Robotics, which builds autonomous construction technology, raised a $270 million Series B in February and then leased about 35,000 square feet at 799 Market Street, according to local reporting. That is a big downtown commitment from a company whose product lives in the physical world, not just on a screen. It also shows the split in the market. Some robotics firms will take central office space when they have the money and want the recruiting signal. Many others still need something messier (prnewswire.com, hoodline.com). The drone side is even more revealing because it collides directly with land use. In 2025, DoorDash leased a Mission District warehouse to use as a research and development site for autonomous delivery, with most testing planned indoors and some outdoors in a gated area. That plan set off a zoning fight. By December, San Francisco supervisors had moved to require conditional use approval for outdoor drone testing in PDR areas, which are supposed to protect production and repair space from being quietly converted into something else. The city was not arguing that robotics demand was fake. It was arguing that the demand had become strong enough to threaten the purpose of the zone (tech.yahoo.com, missionlocal.org, sfplanning.org). That is the real shift. San Francisco is no longer just trying to refill empty offices with conventional office tenants. It is making room for companies that blur the line between software, lab, workshop, and logistics node. Older buildings win because they can bend. The cleanest towers still capture the prestige leases. But some of the city’s most consequential new tenants are looking for loading docks, gated yards, and enough power to make a machine move at 1960 Folsom Street (sfstandard.com, missionlocal.org).