Welcome to San Francisco, the home of AI — the technology that’s going to take your job, become smarter than we can comprehend, and possibly end humanity as we know it. Or save it.
You may think the AI revolution is virtual, but here in San Francisco, you can actually reach out and touch AI — or at least the buildings that house AI.
Where to start? What to see? We’ve created this AI tour of San Francisco, a 10-stop circuit to historic homes, unmarked headquarters, and robotaxi parking lots. (Think Google garage 2.0, this time with autonomous drivers.)
We recommend taking this excursion in a Waymo, natch — unless you are on the beta list for Zoox, which would be even better.
Greg Brockman, the president and cofounder of OpenAI, moved into this three-bedroom, two-bath Victorian triplex in 2015. He and Sam Altman worked on OpenAI from the living room before moving into the Pioneer Building in the Mission. The building is on the market for $1.54 million; listing agent Shane Ray of Compass said some potential buyers sought a tour because of the OpenAI connection. “To know right here in this space, 11 years ago, something pretty pivotal was happening, is intriguing to people,” Ray said.
The street in front of the building was used for a scene in the upcoming movie “Artificial,” starring Andrew Garfield as Altman.
Nothing says tech mecca like two robotic arms massaging your muscles to a customized algorithm. That’s what happens at Aescape, located inside the Mission Street branch of the Equinox gym chain. For $40 to $100 (depending on session length), heated robotic arms glide over your body, palpating your flesh.
Pre-massage, each client is provided with a form-fitting top and bottom to wear, so the robot can maintain consistency of pressure. Sensors scan your body, generating a custom 3D map that features more than 1 million data points to tailor the massage. “This is the first real application of robots fully autonomously coming in contact with human bodies,” CEO Eric Litman said. The sensation is enjoyable — and those who lean gassy will appreciate the privacy.
Grab a quick retina scan at the World store in Union Square. A crypto-identity startup cofounded by Altman, World opened this space last May. The vibe is Scandi-futurism, with blond wood and white walls.
The main attractions are the dystopian white Orbs, mounted in a semicircle, each the size of a bowling ball. Users peer into an Orb for a retina scan and receive a “World ID”; essentially, an encrypted digital passport that proves they’re human but lets them stay anonymous online.
The idea is simple, if sci-fi: In an age of AI and deepfakes, how can you trust that the person you’re chatting with is actually human? Think of it as privacy-preserving proof of humanity. You can use your World ID at Tinder (opens in new tab), Zoom, and other sites.
In 2023, OpenAI subleased Uber’s former HQ near Chase Center, taking over 1455 and 1515 3rd St. — almost 470,000 square feet. The company kept a lot of Uber’s signage, partly as an effort to keep its location on the down-low, given the blowback against AI. But the word is out: In March, Stop AI hosted a protest at this location, covering the sidewalk with chalk slogans such as “Scam Altman” and “Quit your job.”
OpenAI’s conscientious counterpart, Anthropic, is based in the Foundry Square development. The 10-story building was formerly home to Slack, whose buildout included a library, living plant and moss walls, and a built-in barista bar.
Anthropic took over the 240,000-square-foot space in 2023. The company did a light refit with midcentury decor, pale wood floors, terracotta walls, and built in benches, with a burnt-orange throughline that matches the Claude logo. Copies of Richard Rhodes’ 1987 bestseller “The Making of the Atomic Bomb” — a favorite of Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei — are reportedly placed on coffee tables throughout, a reminder of the company’s AI safety-first worldview.
The robotaxi revolution may have started in Phoenix, but no city is more overrun with Waymos than San Francisco, where the company has offered rides since August 2023. This humble parking lot is a hub for many of the 1,000 local Waymos and some fraction (the company won’t say how many) of the more 500,000 paid robotaxi rides weekly, across 10 U.S. cities. This parking lot is less about the ride and more about the eerie choreography of vehicles reversing into spaces, exiting and returning. It’s the uncanny valley at its finest.
(If you want to see the Amazon-owned competition, the Zoox parking lot is not far away, at the corner of Bryant and Division streets.)
This 24-hour coffee shop (opens in new tab) doesn’t run on AI, but the people inside it do. It’s the brainchild of Corgi, an AI insurance startup that launched in 2024 and is valued at $630 million. The cafe has become an unofficial clubhouse for the pre-seed AI crowd, hosting founder networking nights and Y Combinator meetups.
Situated on the ground floor of the Corgi offices, the cafe sells lattes, croissants, and protein-heavy smoothies (up to 42 grams!) with San Francisco names like Sunset, FiDi, and Ocean Beach.
And yes, a real corgi is on hand. Trudy, who’s almost 2 and mostly hangs out in the offices upstairs, sometimes makes an appearance below. “For health-code reasons, we’re unable to permanently keep any corgis in the cafe,” CEO Nico Laqua said.
This boutique, which opened April 10, appears from the outside to be very Marina girl-esque: expensive candles, performative hardback books, and ceramic dishes. But look a little closer, and you’ll realize there are no prices; to check out, you pick up a phone and talk to an AI named Luna. Welcome to the first store run by AI. (opens in new tab)
The market is the brainchild of startup Andon Labs, testing whether an AI agent can manage a store and turn a profit. The AI orders the stock, hires the workers, and talks to human employees over Slack. (Flesh and blood is needed to stock shelves and lock up.)
From the outside, this 16-floor tower looks dingy and rundown. But venture inside, and a whole new world of AI-driven dreams opens up. Welcome to Frontier Tower, a coworking tech hub, where every floor is dedicated to a different passion, from biotech to robotics to AI.
Frontier Tower opened in 2025; in a prior life, the building was a WeWork and before that the headquarters for Burning Man. Today it’s a hub for tech luminaries like Vitalik Buterin, Ashton Kutcher, and OpenClaw’s Peter Steinberger. A stacked events calendar ranges from ClawCon hackathons to humanoid robot fight clubs with a side of taser knife fighting to peptide raves. If you are looking for the culture that begat AI maxxing, you’ve found it.
Opened in November and billed as “the intersection of art and technology,” Tiat (opens in new tab) is an immersive gallery that has become a magnet for creatives working in machine learning, generative art, and the fringes of AI.
Many exhibits are interactive: talk to an AI on phones, pose for a robotic portrait artist, or attend a workshop exploring the crossover between fortune cookies and internet cookies. The space is also home to an artist’s residency founded by the Mozilla Foundation to explore technology as a medium for cultural inquiry.
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