Reed Jobs says San Francisco's post-pandemic office glut at $59.53/sq ft drew AI startups north, shifting tech's center from Silicon Valley. Yosemite invests in oncology.
Reed Jobs, son of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, said San Francisco's post-pandemic office glut helped shift Silicon Valley's center of gravity north, drawing AI startups to the city.
"And where is the energy now? I would say it has really migrated north of San Francisco," Jobs said on the Sabrina Halper Show. He pointed to OpenAI and Anthropic as examples, along with Chai Discovery. Jobs, who grew up in Palo Alto and has lived in San Francisco for nine years, said the pandemic "made a lot of office space really cheap" in the city. Although San Francisco "got very dark" as residents and companies left, the upheaval made it cheaper to launch businesses. "It was just a natural turning point for the city," he said.
A fourth-quarter 2025 report from Cresa shows the Design District, where office space costs around $59.53 per square foot, is seeing a startup cluster. By comparison, the Financial District and Mission Bay both cost at least $70 per square foot. Urban planning experts have said startups prefer energetic, mixed-use areas with affordable, reconfigurable office space to accommodate long work hours and collaboration.
Jobs leads Yosemite, a San Francisco-based venture firm that invests exclusively in oncology. He previously led healthcare investing at his mother's Emerson Collective before spinning out Yosemite in 2023. "We're building Yosemite to be right in the thick of things. So, we're building it here in San Francisco," he said.
IBM, which scored 48 out of 100 on AlphaScala's Alpha Score, was one of the legacy tech companies that built its base in Palo Alto during Steve Jobs' era. The energy has moved north, according to Reed Jobs. The shift is evident in the rise of AI companies like OpenAI and Anthropic, which have established headquarters in San Francisco.
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