> Home sellers in San Francisco demanding AI stock in midst of R.E. Boom driven by 16,000 newly minted multi-millionaires

When Nima Gabbay decided to sell his three-bedroom, two-bath San Francisco home for $2.995 million last month, his listing described the residence’s soaring 10-foot ceilings, kitchen wrapped in Calacatta marble, remote-control skylights and oversize two-car garage.

The 51-year-old real estate investor and developer also added an unusual clause: He would accept shares of OpenAI or Anthropic as payment for the home.

Two OpenAI employees soon came forward offering some of their shares for the property, Mr. Gabbay said. One bid more than $1 million above the asking price, but appeared to inflate the value of his OpenAI stock. The other backed off when OpenAI filed to go public last month, deciding to hang on to the stock.

Mr. Gabbay ultimately went with a third buyer who works in tech, and the sale is set to close this week. He was not at liberty to disclose the sale terms or the buyer’s identity because he had signed a nondisclosure agreement, he said.


“There’s a bit of a gold rush situation right now in San Francisco,” Mr. Gabbay said. Selling the home was “an avenue for me to potentially pick up some of this stock and be a part of the excitement of the companies going public.”

Even before OpenAI and Anthropic hold initial public offerings, the artificial intelligence companies — which are based in San Francisco and leading the A.I. boom — are distorting the city’s housing market. Sellers are asking for pre-I.P.O. stock as payment for homes, property prices are surging as buyers bet that whatever they overpay today will look cheap tomorrow, and landlords are pushing out tenants to sell into the hotter market.

The maneuvering is aimed at getting ahead of the wave of wealth when OpenAI and Anthropic, each valued at nearly $1 trillion, go public. Their I.P.O.s, plus the recent public offering of Elon Musk’s SpaceX, could create more than 16,000 millionaires and more than 20 billionaires, according to Sacra, a private market research company…