Artificial intelligence is minting a new class of millionaires in San Francisco — and they’re running out of mansions to buy.

A wave of wealth tied to the city’s booming AI industry is sending home prices soaring, triggering bidding wars with as many as 50 offers and leaving even buyers armed with $25 million in cash out in the cold, NPR reported.

The frenzy marks a stunning turnaround for a city whose housing market slumped during the pandemic as tech workers scattered and offices emptied.

Now, AI companies are rapidly expanding, employees are returning to their desks and startups including OpenAI and Anthropic are generating enormous paper wealth for workers and investors — with potentially even larger windfalls ahead.

That said, the median home sale price in San Francisco has jumped 25% from a year ago, according to Compass data cited by NPR.

Compass agent Paul Kitchen told NPR that some listings have attracted as many as 50 offers. At the very top of the market, buyers offering $25 million or more in cash have still been outbid.

“You have to laugh just because it is so ridiculous and so beyond the pale,” Kitchen said.

In June alone, 44 homes sold for at least $1 million above their asking prices, Compass chief economist Mike Simonsen told NPR.

The collision of newly wealthy buyers and a limited supply of large, move-in-ready properties has produced what industry insiders are calling a “mansion shortage.”

Many of those buyers are AI executives in their 30s and early 40s who need homes quickly as their children reach school age, Simonsen said. Their urgency, combined with their ability to make enormous cash offers, is intensifying competition in San Francisco’s most affluent neighborhoods.

The mansion frenzy is an extreme expression of San Francisco’s broader housing shortage, which is squeezing buyers at nearly every income level.

Only 2.1% of the city’s listings in March 2026 were affordable to a household earning about $75,000, leaving a deficit of approximately 2,475 homes within reach of those buyers, according to a May 2026 analysis from Realtor.com and the National Association of Realtors.

San Francisco received a listing-to-income alignment score of just 66%, meaning the distribution of homes for sale remains badly mismatched with what residents at different income levels can afford. The score improved by 4.5 points from March 2025 and 8.3 points from March 2019, but remained well below a balanced market.

Renters are feeling the same supply pressure. NPR reported that highly paid young tech workers who can afford rents as high as $10,000 a month are flooding the market, with some apartments receiving hundreds of inquiries within hours.

One couple took a $5,200-per-month apartment sight unseen after repeatedly watching other listings disappear, while another prospective renter encountered bidding that raised an apartment’s monthly price by $1,000 before he had even toured it.

The surge has renewed fears of displacement in a city where previous tech booms already drove out residents who could no longer afford to stay.

Whether it is a $25 million mansion or a modest starter home, the underlying problem is the same: San Francisco has too many buyers chasing too few properties — and the AI boom is raising the stakes.