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JUST IN
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Bay Area


ELON MUSK TO OPEN XAI OFFICE IN OPENAI’S FORMER HEADQUARTERS IN S.F. MISSION
DISTRICT

By Maliya Ellis, Hearst FellowOct 2, 2024




Elon Musk listed the Pioneer Building at 3180 18th St. in San Francisco as a
sublease in August, but he appears to have changed course, moving his own
company xAI into the space. 

Stephen Lam/The Chronicle 2023

Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company has opened an office in San
Francisco’s Mission District, in a building he formerly subleased to competitor
company OpenAI, the tech billionaire announced at an event Tuesday. 

The company, xAI Corp., has moved some of its employees into an office at 3180
18th St., a historic structure known as the Pioneer Building that Musk leases,
the San Francisco Business Times first reported Wednesday. 

Until earlier this summer, Musk had subleased the 37,000-square-foot building to
xAI competitor and artificial intelligence giant OpenAI. After that  company
departed for new headquarters, Musk put the building on the market for a new
sublease tenant. 

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But Musk seems to have changed course.  

The SpaceX and Tesla founder announced that his own company would be occupying
the Pioneer Building during an invite-only open house held in the space Tuesday
evening, according to Marvin von Hagen, who attended the networking event. Musk
told attendees that his team has already refurnished the building, von Hagen
said. 

Musk’s announcement comes less than two months after he moved social media
company X out of San Francisco. X, which was formerly known as Twitter and is
separate from xAI, exited its 1355 Market St. headquarters on Aug. 13, ending a
12-year residence in the Mid-Market building. 

The tech mogul said X will likely relocate its headquarters to Austin, Texas. In
July, Musk also said he would relocate SpaceX’s headquarters from Hawthorne (Los
Angeles County) to Starbase, Texas. 

The arrangement is still unofficial. As of Wednesday, the Pioneer Building is
still available to sublease, an employee for JLL, which brokers the building,
told the Chronicle over the phone. 

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XAI currently has an office in Palo Alto that houses the majority of the
company’s core research teams, according to its website. 

Musk’s announcement and open house was timed to coincide with a major day for
OpenAI, of which xAI is a direct competitor. The ChatGPT developer held its Dev
Day event in San Francisco earlier on Tuesday. 

Though Musk was an early funder of OpenAI, he parted ways with the company in
2018 and founded xAI as a direct competitor in July 2023. Musk has criticized
OpenAI as having a liberal bias and has repeatedly sued the company for
allegedly straying from its roots as a nonprofit venture. 

Musk’s xAI has come under fire for its AI-powered image generator, Grok-2, which
generates controversial images — like presidents consuming drugs — that
competitor platforms, like DALL-E, refuse to generate.

Since leaving the Pioneer Building, OpenAI is actively expanding its presence
elsewhere in the city, having finalized a 315,000-square-foot lease at 550 Terry
A. Francois Blvd. in Mission Bay in September. The location is just a block from
OpenAI’s 486,600-square-foot holding at 1455 and 1515 Third St., a sublease
from Uber signed last October.



OpenAI’s technical chief, Mira Murati, resigned from the company last month
without citing specific reasons for her departure.

Reach Maliya Ellis: maliya.ellis@hearst.com






Oct 2, 2024
Maliya Ellis
Hearst Fellow

MALIYA ELLIS, ORIGINALLY FROM NEW HAVEN, CONN., IS A RECENT GRADUATE OF HARVARD
UNIVERSITY, WHERE SHE STUDIED SOCIAL STUDIES AND EDITED THE HARVARD CRIMSON’S
WEEKLY NEWS MAGAZINE. HER SUMMER NEWSROOM INTERNSHIPS — ON THE PITTSBURGH
POST-GAZETTE’S FEATURES DESK AND THE BOSTON GLOBE’S METRO TEAM — HAVE CONFIRMED
HER PASSION FOR DEEPLY REPORTED LOCAL NEWS. IN HER FREE TIME, ELLIS ENJOYS LONG
RUNS AND WORD GAMES. SHE IS EXCITED TO EXPLORE A NEW COAST AND A NEW CITY.
 




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