Anthropic’s new downtown headquarters gives the artificial intelligence pioneer a polished home in the heart of San Francisco. But the company is quietly eyeing a decades-old industrial building in a nearby neighborhood.
The AI company, whose investors are reportedly targeting an IPO valuation of about $2 trillion, is said to be considering leasing 2000 Folsom St., which spans roughly 100,000 square feet, according to multiple real estate insiders. The two-story property sits at the corner of 16th and Folsom streets in the Mission District, some 2 miles from the company’s headquarters at 300 Howard St.
Anthropic’s plan for the building is to use it as a research and development lab, sources said. The company declined to comment on the pending deal when contacted by the Chronicle.
A representative of the Folsom Street property’s landlord, 2000 Folsom Street Partners LLC, also declined to comment.
The deal, which has not closed, would add a decidedly different kind of space to Anthropic’s rapidly growing San Francisco footprint — which so far has focused on office space and expanding its computing infrastructure in other parts of the country. The Folsom Street property is the birth-place of Just Mayo — a plant-based mayonnaise by food startup Hampton Creek, now known as Eat Just, Inc. that drew national attention, as well as legal scrutiny, from egg producers. Eat Just occupied the property in the years leading up to the pandemic, but relocated its operations to the East Bay in 2021, and ultimately faced a lawsuit from its San Francisco landlord over unpaid rent. The 2000 Folsom building sat vacant until a robotics company took it over two years ago, sources confirmed.
The property is zoned for Production, Distribution, Repair, or PDR — allowing uses that include manufacturing, food production, warehousing and auto repair. The city’s PDR districts are concentrated in the city’s eastern neighborhoods, including parts of SoMa, the Mission, Potrero Hill and the Bayview. This zoning is designed to keep industrial areas available for businesses that make, move or repair things, rather than letting housing, office campuses and large offices take over.
Tech and AI companies are increasingly looking beyond conventional offices to build and test products that interact with the physical world. Several have moved into former industrial buildings around San Francisco, including Medra, which leased a full building at 1301 Folsom St., and Amazon’s robotics division, which is pursuing space at 650 Townsend St. in Showplace Square. Food delivery platform Doordash also settled on Folsom Street, leasing a 34,000 square-foot facility for research, development and testing of delivery drones in partnership with Wing. That facility is located a block from where Anthropic could soon open its new outpost.
Anthropic’s potential industrial lease comes after the company leased a 25-story office tower at 300 Howard St., which it plans to occupy as its new headquarters, adding to its existing campus along Howard Street, near Salesforce Tower. The company signed on to take over the office tower for a term of 13 years — a rare move in downtown’s office market, where many young AI startups have and other companies have opted for shorter leases after the pandemic.
Anthropic was founded in 2021 by San Francisco natives and former OpenAI executives, siblings Dario and Daniela Amodei, in a small office in Jackson Square. The company’s astronomical growth in recent years has been fueled by investment from major tech companies including Amazon and Google.