AI firms driving premium SF leasing
Social posts say AI companies are leading recent office leasing activity in San Francisco, with high‑speed collaboration needs and renewed campus interest cited as reasons occupiers are returning to premium spaces. Brokers flagged OpenAI’s planned expansion as a potential market catalyst while reports note a bifurcated market—improving Class A absorption alongside rising B/C vacancies. (x.com) (x.com)
San Francisco’s office rebound is being carried by artificial intelligence tenants, and most of that demand is landing in newer Class A buildings. (cbre.com) CBRE said San Francisco ended the first quarter of 2026 with 30.4% vacancy and 2,272,946 square feet of positive net absorption, while Savills said leasing hit 3.8 million square feet, the city’s strongest quarter since 2014. (cbre.com) (savills.us) Savills said OpenAI, Databricks and Anthropic accounted for a significant share of recent leasing, with OpenAI occupying more than 1.0 million square feet in San Francisco, Anthropic nearing 1.0 million square feet, and Databricks at about 240,000 square feet at 1 Sansome. (savills.us) Colliers said the demand is concentrated in “premier Class A buildings,” while Kidder Mathews said tenants are favoring newer, amenity-rich offices that support in-person collaboration and future growth. (colliers.com) (kidder.com) That has split the market in two. Kidder Mathews said high-quality buildings are pulling in long-term commitments, while older and less flexible inventory is falling further behind. (kidder.com) OpenAI’s March expansion helped define the trend. The Real Deal reported that the company subleased about 280,000 square feet at 1800 Owens Street in Mission Bay, pushing its San Francisco footprint past 1 million square feet. (therealdeal.com) Days later, The Real Deal reported that OpenAI also confirmed a 450,000-square-foot campus lease in Mountain View, showing that the company is adding Bay Area office capacity even as many tech employers still operate hybrid schedules. (therealdeal.com) JLL said San Francisco now has the highest number of artificial-intelligence-related office leases of any city in the world, with 143 transactions covering about 2.6 million square feet, and said roughly 80% of citywide venture funding in January 2026 went to just 10 artificial intelligence companies. (jll.com) Investors are following that leasing. JLL said San Francisco investment volume jumped 140% year over year and institutional buyers now account for 60% to 70% of deal activity, up from 20% two years earlier. (jll.com) The recovery is real, but it is not broad. The same broker reports showing stronger absorption and lower availability in top-tier space also describe a market where the comeback is concentrated in premium buildings, not across the full office stock. (cbre.com) (colliers.com)
