San Francisco's AI Wealth Boom Is Pricing Out Six-Figure Tech Workers

San Francisco's cost-of-living crisis has reached a surreal new threshold: tech workers earning $180,000–$185,000 a year are finding themselves squeezed out of the city they came to chase the Silicon Valley dream. Katrine Razniak, 27, and her partner Adam Woodbury, 39, spent three months touring roughly 30 apartments looking for a one-bedroom under $5,000 a month — and came up empty. At one $5,200/month open house, 30 people had already signed in within the first hour. Woodbury has since relocated to Carnelian Bay near Lake Tahoe; Razniak remains in a Haight-Ashbury apartment she shares with two roommates, paying $1,650. Despite a combined household income that places them well within the top 20% of American earners, the couple is now eyeing Seattle.

The pressure cooker is the AI gold rush. OpenAI and Anthropic — both headquartered in San Francisco and together valued at nearly $1 trillion — are preparing to go public. According to private markets research firm Sacra, those IPOs, along with Elon Musk's newly public SpaceX, could mint more than 20 new billionaires from current and former employees. That's a 10x wealth event compared to Uber's 2019 IPO at an $82 billion valuation, per San Francisco chief economist Ted Egan. The result: a stratified city where workers without AI equity feel economically outclassed in their own neighborhoods.

The numbers back up the angst. San Francisco's overall cost of living sits 65.6% above the national average, per the Council for Community and Economic Research. The median home price hit $1.7 million in April — nearly four times the national median of $450,000. Average apartment rent has surpassed New York City's to become the most expensive in the country at $3,827/month, per CoStar. Vacancy rates in hot neighborhoods like the Marina District and Pacific Heights have collapsed from about 13% in 2020 to roughly 3% today, while new construction has stalled. Utilities run 41% above national baselines, transportation 43% higher, and groceries 19% more.

The squeeze is visible in lived experience. Razniak says her monthly budget has ballooned by $1,000 compared to prior years for what she describes as essentially the same lifestyle. She and her friends abandoned restaurant dinners last year, pivoting to potlucks and reality-TV nights. Elsewhere, a 25-year-old fintech worker posted two rooms in a four-bedroom house to a private Facebook group for 24 hours and received 88 responses — compared to 28 responses over four days for a comparable listing just a year earlier. Meanwhile, 23-year-old Jolie Gan, earning $250,000 across two jobs at Andreessen Horowitz and a tech publication, says she can manage and plans to stay — but acknowledges friends earning under $200,000 are watching rent, utilities, and groceries consume nearly everything they earn.