You don't have to imagine it. You're living it.

AI money is already pushing SF housing prices significantly upward, and neither OpenAI nor Anthropic have gone public yet. The mere anticipation of IPO windfalls is enough to supercharge demand in a market that was already brutal. Engineers and executives sitting on pre-IPO equity are locking in leases and making offers based on wealth they haven't technically realized, and landlords and sellers are pricing accordingly.

This is the Bay Area housing cycle on steroids. We've seen it before — the Google IPO, the Facebook IPO, the Uber and Airbnb era — but the AI boom is compressing the timeline and amplifying the effect. The difference this time is that it's landing on a city still recovering from a pandemic-era exodus, commercial real estate vacancies, and a downtown struggling to find its footing.

The result? A two-tier city forming in real time. As one local put it: "Even being in tech it's like, oh there are ultra-techies now who make $2 million a year, so I am realizing that working here for 10 years has basically earned me just about nothing. I ate through the high cost of living for nothing."

That's not bitterness — that's math. When the floor for competitive rentals keeps rising, even six-figure salaries start feeling like treading water. Another SF resident summed it up plainly: "The economics of daily life are on shaky ground."

So what's the actual answer here? It's the same one it's always been, and the one City Hall keeps fumbling: build more housing. Not affordable housing mandates that make projects pencil out for nobody. Not bureaucratic review processes that add years and millions to construction timelines. Actual supply. The laws of economics haven't been repealed just because AI is the new gold rush.

San Francisco has a narrow window to get this right — to channel an influx of wealth into a broader, more resilient city instead of just a richer, more exclusive one. But that requires political courage and regulatory reform, two things this city historically treats as optional.

The IPOs are coming. The housing we need is not. Do the math.