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☆ I left my Big Tech job to bootstrap my own business. I went from making nearly $300,000 to not paying myself a salary.
▼ + stars: | 2024-10-31 | by ( Pooja Shah | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +7 min

In October 2023, Soni Mehra left her Big Tech job to focus on her own home decor business. I was accustomed to working with larger teams in Big Tech, so I've had to get used to balancing multiple tasks. Thankfully, I can rely on savings from my prior Big Tech roles. I no longer make the same salary as I did in Big Tech, but still prioritize spending money on things my partner and I value, like travel. People ask me if I'd ever return to Big Tech.

Persons: Soni Mehra, Mehra, —, Gabrielle Wesley, Uber, I'd, I've, I'm Organizations: Big Tech, Service, Uber, Marble Lotus, Business, San, San Francisco Bay Area, Environmental, University of California, Mars, LinkedIn, Marble, Big, Entrepreneurs Locations: Delhi, India, San Francisco Bay, Berkeley, Mars Wrigley North America, COVID, Big Tech, Bay

☆ Why Elon Musk Is Really Taking Twitter Out of San Francisco
▼ + stars: | 2024-09-12 | by ( Adam Rogers | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +13 min

From the front door of X, which is closing up shop in San Francisco on Friday, Market Street runs straight through downtown to the bay. Now, as X leaves its spot, Market Street is still suffering from all the same problems it had before Twitter. After handing over millions of dollars in tax breaks to one of the world's wealthiest corporations, San Francisco has nothing to show for it. AdvertisementI keep remembering a work trip I took to San Francisco in 1999, a few years before I moved here. "Our focus remains on working with and supporting the many businesses that call San Francisco home," the statement reads.

Persons: Daniel Burnham, Elon Musk, Twitter, Ted Egan, Bon Marché, Paula Smith Arrigoni, restaurateurs, Dolby, Twitter didn't, Egan, Uber decamped, Musk, San Francisco, Adam Rogers Organizations: Twitter, Central Market, Anadolu, Getty, AQ, Area, Coalition, Apple, New York Times, San, Sony, Microsoft, Ikea, London Breed, Business Locations: San Francisco, Austin, South Park, California, Brisbane, Texas, scuzzy, gentrify, Alta, Oro, Bon, Kaya, Bay, Oakland

Artificial intelligence has been a big boon for San Francisco real estate. The vacancy rate for San Francisco office space reached a fresh record of 34.5% in the second quarter, according to a report Monday from commercial real estate firm Cushman & Wakefield. "San Francisco is certainly the center of AI, but AI is not going to save the San Francisco commercial real estate market," Sammons said. Vacant office space across San Francisco for the quarter totaled 29.6 million square feet, Cushman & Wakefield said. WATCH: Commercial real estate vacancies in San Francisco are at an all-time high

Persons: OpenAI, Robert Sammons, Anthropic, Sammons, That's, Cushman & Wakefield Organizations: San, Tech, Microsoft, Cushman &, San Francisco, Wells Locations: San Francisco, Wakefield, Mission, Cushman & Wakefield, Francisco, Wells Fargo, Cushman

☆ Inside Y Combinator's 60,000-square-foot, San Francisco college town
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-03 | by ( Melia Russell | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

The full-blown mania in artificial intelligence is bringing tech workers and startups back to San Francisco. Last June, the startup accelerator moved its headquarters from Mountain View into its new digs at the Pier 70 shipyard. Y Combinator partners record an episode of the Lightcone podcast in a production studio complete with professional cameras and lighting fixtures. Y CombinatorRemoving 'friction'For 17 years, Y Combinator set its base in Mountain View. The new San Francisco outpost was born from a desire to get founders in person again post-pandemic.

Persons: —, Jared Friedman, hasn't, Y Combinator Friedman, Y, Friedman, Carlos Avila Gonzalez, Bart, Lindsay Amos Organizations: Service, Volkswagen, Business, Chase, San, Rail, San Francisco Chronicle, Bay Area, YC Locations: San Francisco, Mountain View, San, bayside, View, Mission Bay, Bay, North Beach

☆ It seems some tech leaders are coming back to San Francisco
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-19 | by ( Beatrice Nolan | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

Some tech leaders are returning to San Francisco, The Wall Street Journal reported. San Francisco's commercial real estate market is also getting a boost from the AI boom. AdvertisementIt seems like San Francisco is luring some tech bosses back after a pandemic-induced exodus. Now, he plans to spend one week a month in San Francisco and is renovating a house in the city, The Journal reported. Meanwhile, San Francisco has grappled with a homelessness problem and shifts in crime patterns.

Persons: —, San, Keith Rabois, cofounders Henrique Dubugras, Pedro Franceschi, Howie Liu, Rabois, Elon Musk, Sam Altman Organizations: Street Journal, Service, The, Meta, PayPal, California Globe Locations: San Francisco, Miami

☆ Dropbox plans to pay $79 million to shrink its huge SF office, after CEO says the RTO push will fail
▼ + stars: | 2023-10-23 | by ( Tom Carter | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Dropbox will pay $79 million to give up 165,000 square feet of office space at its San Francisco HQ. The company switched to remote working during the pandemic and workers now follow a '90/10' routine. CEO Drew Houston has backed remote working, and said the return-to-office push is doomed to fail. AdvertisementAdvertisementDropbox is spending $79 million to give up a quarter of its San Francisco headquarters, as it continues to bet that remote working is here to stay. Dropbox's move to cut back on its physical office space is a fresh blow to San Francisco, which is going through a commercial real estate crisis .

Persons: Dropbox, Drew Houston, —, Fortune, Houston, Jones Lang LaSalle Organizations: San Francisco HQ, Service, San, SEC, CNBC, Jones Locations: San Francisco, Mission Bay

☆ Dropbox handing over 25% of San Francisco HQ back to landlord as commercial real estate softens
▼ + stars: | 2023-10-20 | by ( Jordan Novet | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +3 min

Dropbox said Friday that it's agreed to return over one quarter of its San Francisco headquarters to the landlord as the commercial real estate market continues to soften following the Covid pandemic. In a filing, Dropbox said it agreed to surrender to its landlord 165,244 square feet of space and pay $79 million in termination fees. Under the amendment to its lease agreement, Dropbox will offload the space over time through the first quarter of 2025. In addition, Dropbox took a $175.2 million impairment on the office last year "as a result of adverse changes" in the market. Dropbox had tried working with its landlord to sublease space at the headquarters, but the real estate market deteriorated, finance chief Tim Regan, told analysts on a February earnings call.

Persons: Dropbox, it's, we've, Drew Houston, Dropbox's, Uber, Tim Regan Organizations: San Francisco, Vir Biotechnology, CNBC, Private, KKR, Kilroy Realty Corp, San Francisco Chronicle, Microsoft Locations: Mission, Dropbox

☆ Zuckerberg's philanthropy project plans AI system for life sciences research
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-19 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

REUTERS/Beck Diefenbach/File Photo Acquire Licensing RightsSept 19 (Reuters) - Meta (META.O) CEO Mark Zuckerberg's philanthropy venture plans to build a computing system powered by artificial intelligence for life sciences research to study human cells and diseases. The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, created by Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan, will use the computing system to run openly available AI models, the philanthropy venture said on Tuesday. AI has been used in the life sciences domain for some years. The system will be trained on datasets from software tool CZ Cell x Gene, as well as resources from Chan Zuckerberg Biohub Network and Chan Zuckerberg Institute for Advanced Biological Imaging, and publicly available data. The company released its latest Llama 2 model in July, and offered it for free to businesses of a certain size.

Persons: Priscilla Chan, Mark Zuckerberg, Chan, Beck, Mark, Chan Zuckerberg, Zuckerberg, Nvidia's, Yuvraj Malik, Shounak Dasgupta Organizations: Initiative, UCSF, REUTERS, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Google, Imaging, Meta, Thomson Locations: Bay, San Francisco , California, U.S, Bengaluru

☆ Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff says he's neighbors with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and the pair chatted about AI over dinner together
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-01 | by ( Grace Dean | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff says he's neighbors with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and speaks to him regularly. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff says that he's neighbors with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and that the pair spoke about artificial intelligence over dinner together. "My neighbor, Sam Altman, is the CEO of OpenAI," Benioff told investors at the company's earnings call Wednesday. "But I did notice that there was only one application that he was using on his laptop, and that was Slack," Benioff told investors. Speaking about the creation of Slack GPT, Benioff told investors: "You may never need to leave Slack to get a question answered."

Persons: Marc Benioff, Sam Altman, Altman, Benioff, Slack, OpenAI, Elon Musk, Salesforce, Slack GPT, we've Organizations: Elon Locations: OpenAI, San Francisco

☆ Dropbox hit with $175 million real estate loss for 2022 as San Francisco office space sits empty
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-16 | by ( Jordan Novet | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +3 min

Its total real estate impairment for the year was $175.2 million, which is still well below the $400 million hit the company took in late 2020. That reduced the company's need for office space and pushed it to find tenants to sublease significant chunks of its headquarters. "And there's certainly been an increase in supply for real estate for sublease, which has pushed out our anticipated time to lease." Salesforce , Airbnb , Uber and Zendesk are among other companies that have taken real estate impairments in the city. Dropbox executives had expected to sublease the company's San Francisco property in the middle of 2023.

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