San Francisco’s Showplace Square is suddenly looking a lot like AI Row, as two fast-growing firms circle enough office space to fill a small mall.
Together AI is in talks to take roughly 150,000 square feet at 2 Henry Adams, and robotics company Physical Intelligence is close to a sublease for about 60,000 square feet at 808 Brannan. If both deals get over the finish line, the once-industrial pocket just west of Mission Bay could become the latest hot zone in the city’s AI land grab.
Those negotiations were first reported by the San Francisco Chronicle, which detailed Together AI’s interest in about 150,000 square feet at 2 Henry Adams and Physical Intelligence’s pursuit of roughly 60,000 square feet at 808 Brannan. Airbnb is marketing the Brannan Street space and that neither company responded to requests for comment, framing the possible moves as part of a broader wave of AI tenants locking up major blocks of office space, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
Physical Intelligence is not exactly a scrappy garage startup. Bloomberg reported the robotics firm raised roughly $600 million in late 2025, giving it a post-money valuation of about $5.6 billion. Founded by former DeepMind researchers and academics from Stanford and Berkeley, the company focuses on building generalizable robot brains and is scaling up lab and engineering operations to match its ambitions, according to Bloomberg.
Together AI is on its own steep trajectory. Coverage on Nasdaq notes a roughly $305 million Series B that pushed the company’s valuation to about $3.3 billion as it builds out an open-source model and cloud infrastructure for developers. Planting a substantial flag in San Francisco would bring the Menlo Park-area company closer to the city’s AI talent pool and the growing Mission Bay ecosystem, according to Nasdaq.
How Showplace Square Opened Up
Showplace Square did not become available by accident. A wave of pandemic-era pullbacks left behind rare, contiguous blocks of upgraded space that had once been spoken for. Airbnb previously ran a multi-building campus in the district before trimming its footprint, and Zynga put roughly 185,000 square feet on the sublease market in 2021. Scale AI later subleased a large portion of Airbnb’s 650 Townsend building in 2024, as reported by SFGATE. Those moves created the inventory that landlords and brokers are now pitching to deep-pocketed AI tenants.
Vanderbilt Campus Adds An Anchor
It is not just companies reshaping the neighborhood’s future. On the education front, Vanderbilt University has announced plans to acquire the California College of the Arts campus and open a full-time San Francisco campus, with classes expected to begin in 2027. Vanderbilt says the new site will host roughly 1,000 students and blend technology and design programs as part of its academic strategy, according to Vanderbilt University.
What Landlords Are Betting On
Landlords and brokers say that big, uninterrupted office blocks have become a scarce commodity as AI firms ramp up leases and renewals. CBRE data cited in recent coverage shows a jump in citywide leasing in 2025, with AI outfits accounting for an outsized share of that demand, a trend that helps explain why tenants are chasing Showplace Square’s block-sized floor plates, according to The Real Deal. Brokers say many tenants are prioritizing locations that offer large, contiguous floors to support collaboration, lab space and hardware-heavy work.
For now, the potential Showplace Square deals remain behind closed doors, with plenty of room for terms to shift. The San Francisco Chronicle reported that neither Together AI nor Physical Intelligence has publicly confirmed the talks and that Airbnb declined to comment on the 808 Brannan sublease. If the leases ultimately land, they would add another data point in how AI hiring sprees and campus strategies are rewriting San Francisco’s office playbook.
