San Francisco is back as the world’s leading tech hub
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Starting in 2020, the pandemic emptied offices and changed the ways tech companies operate, and how us techies work and collaborate, by making remote and hybrid work patterns the norm. San Francisco (SF) on the US West Coast became emblematic of a major shift: we saw an exodus of tech companies from the city as Pinterest, Stripe, PayPal, and others downsized, Tesla and Oracle moved to Texas, and many VCs, founders, and startups quit for other locations, or simply went fully remote.
But today, things are changing again. I’ve just returned from San Francisco, where I visited the headquarters of several leading AI companies and up-and-coming startups. Based on my conversations and observations, SF is most definitely back – and it’s more important than ever.
A new wave of AI startups has been the catalyst to make SF into a buzzing tech hub once more: there are ever more startups launching in the city, the AI meetup scene is energetic, and it’s easy for people to collaborate with one another in person. The tech hub model is proving its value all over again in SF, and might even be one reason for the incredible growth and adoption of AI products and services. Of course, Silicon Valley has no shortage of innovation, VC funding – and a substantial Big Tech presence – but SF stands out for the number of high-growth startups headquartered there.
The city looks like a trailblazer for the re-emergence of the tech hub model, reverting back from the remote work surge of 2020-2023. For companies and professionals, this seems relevant – wherever they’re based.
Today, we cover:
Cursor: push for release 2.0. A cozy office and a focus on shipping.
AI dev tools startups ahead of the curve. Wispr Flow wants devs to code more by talking, Continue is the “CI/CD infra for AI agents”, and Factory builds AI agents for engineering teams.
OpenAI. Scaling faster than any company ever. 10x infra growth for two years straight, with no signs of that slowing down. Refreshingly, OpenAI also hires junior engineers as well as seniors.
Anthropic. Self-organization at scale. Cofounder and former CTO Sam McCandlish shared what helps the company grow, and we discussed their tech stack and engineering challenges.
Buzzing meetups. The local chapter of AI Tinkerers was brimming with “builder energy”, and more than the usual amount of insider knowledge about models, maybe because
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