Forget market caps and funding rounds for a second. If you want to know which AI companies are actually betting big on San Francisco's future, look at the one metric that requires signing on a dotted line for years: office square footage.

The AI boom has completely reshuffled the city's commercial real estate landscape, and the numbers paint a fascinating picture. While tech layoffs dominated headlines for the past two years and remote work zealots declared the office dead, AI firms have been quietly — and not so quietly — gobbling up massive amounts of space across SoMa, the Financial District, and Mid-Market.

This is, on balance, great news for a city that was staring down a commercial real estate apocalypse not long ago. Vacancy rates in SF office buildings hit historic highs post-pandemic, and the resulting crater in property tax revenue has been a major contributor to the city's ongoing budget woes. Every floor an AI company leases is tax revenue the city desperately needs — revenue that doesn't require raising taxes on everyone else.

But let's pump the brakes on the victory lap. We've seen this movie before. San Francisco went all-in on Web 2.0, rode the sugar high, then watched companies flee to Austin, Miami, and anywhere with lower taxes and less red tape. The city's political class has a remarkable talent for taking a golden goose and regulating it into a slow-cooked foie gras.

The real question isn't how much space these companies are leasing today — it's whether City Hall can resist the urge to treat them like ATMs. AI-specific taxes, burdensome local regulations, "community benefit" shakedowns — the playbook is predictable. And AI companies, unlike the social media giants before them, have even less reason to be physically tied to any one city.

So here's the unsolicited advice: let them build. Let them hire. Let them fill those empty towers. And for once, maybe don't punish the industry that's actually keeping the lights on.