Something big is happening across the Bay. Tens of billions of dollars in new AI wealth is being created in San Francisco and Silicon Valley, basically in real time. OpenAI just ran a massive secondary share sale that let current and former employees cash out about $6.6 billion worth of stock at a valuation that now puts the company around $500 billion.
Investors reportedly lined up from Thrive Capital to SoftBank to buy that equity, and analysts are already saying that early OpenAI workers alone just got enough fresh liquidity to buy every single home sold in San Francisco in the last year.
Nvidia, which makes the chips that power all this AI training, has been minting personal fortunes at a level people inside tech are openly calling unprecedented.
Reports this summer said roughly 80% of Nvidia employees are now millionaires on paper, and a huge share of them are multimillionaires, thanks to stock awards and an insane run-up in Nvidia’s valuation to the multi-trillion-dollar range.
Anthropic — one of OpenAI’s biggest rivals and the company behind Claude — just raised a $13 billion round led by some of the heaviest hitters in venture capital and sovereign money.
That round valued the company at about $183 billion. Anthropic also recently offered employees and alumni a way to sell some of their shares in a tender offer at tens of billions of dollars in valuation, effectively letting staff pull real cash out of their equity even though the company hasn’t gone public.
In other words: a firehose of new money is pointed at Bay Area housing. The question every 925 homeowner is quietly asking is, OK, but when does that actually land in Walnut Creek, Pleasant Hill, Danville, San Ramon, Lamorinda and beyond? And how ugly does it get?
Let’s walk through it.
Disclaimer: Nothing in this article should be considered financial advice. We are journalists and not real estate professionals. Consult professional advisors before making any financial decisions, and do not make decisions based on the information in this article. It is for informational purposes only, compiled from public sources of data.
Step 1: The AI money hits San Francisco first
Right now, the first stop for this wealth is still San Francisco, specifically the AI core that’s grown up in and around Hayes Valley, Alamo Square, SoMa, and down the Mission-to-Potrero corridor.
Insiders have been calling this cluster “Cerebral Valley,” and it’s become a dense hive of AI startups, founder houses, and accelerator pods where companies expect teams to show up in person, not on Zoom. AI firms are renting high-end apartments, bidding on Class A office space, and in some cases literally paying housing stipends so employees can stay near HQ.
That matters for us because it tells you where Round 1 of the spending goes. The first wave of AI cash buyers, early employees, and suddenly-upgraded renters are mostly still young, single, or DINK (dual income, no kids).
They want to be near the office and near other AI people. They’re not immediately panic-buying four-bedroom houses in Walnut Creek. They’re renting $6K live/work flats in the city and throwing money at Hayes Valley bistros.
So in the short term, this surge props up SF’s urban core and nearby high-income zip codes, which had been wobbling after tech’s remote-work slump. San Francisco home prices have already started climbing again, with the median sale price in the broader SF metro up about 7 to 8% year-over-year going into 2025, after a long cooldown. Analysts point to tight inventory and a fresh cohort of very well-paid buyers.
Step 2: Then it crosses the bridge… slowly, then suddenly
Here’s where the 925 comes in.
At some point, these AI workers do what every previous generation of Bay Area tech money did: they partner up, have a kid (or at least start talking about schools), and start looking for a yard, a garage, a BART stop, and a Trader Joe’s with parking.
When that moment hits, they almost always turn their heads east — Orinda, Lafayette, Moraga, Walnut Creek, Pleasant Hill, Danville, San Ramon, Alamo, even out toward the Tri-Valley.
Why here? Two big reasons:
- Commute math. If you’ve got to go into SF or down to a Peninsula data center a couple days a week, the I-680 / Hwy 24 corridor is still within striking distance, or at least more realistic than Gilroy or Sacramento. Companies building frontier AI models are telling recruits that AI is not a remote job. It’s in-office, in-person, high-intensity.
- Schools and space. Lamorinda sits on the short list of East Bay districts with elite schools and leafy streets. San Ramon Valley Unified and Walnut Creek’s enclaves sell that same pitch: safe, quiet, good test scores, and you can still get pho, boba, and a decent espresso within 5 minutes.
So the flood pattern is predictable. First SF. Then North Oakland / Rockridge / Temescal. Then through the Caldecott. Then straight into the 680 belt.
We’ve seen this movie before with Facebook and Google money in the 2010s, and with biotech cash more recently in places like Orinda and Alamo.
What’s different this time is scale and speed. When a single company (OpenAI) is handing out billions in employee liquidity at unicorn-on-steroids valuations, and another (Nvidia) has allegedly turned a huge share of its entire 36,000-person workforce into paper millionaires, the number of people who can write an all-cash, no-contingency, $2.2 million offer in Moraga shoots way up almost overnight.
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How hot is the 925 right now?
Let’s ground this in actual Contra Costa County data.
Countywide, the market is still tight. As of early fall, Contra Costa County had roughly 2.5 months of inventory, which is realtor-speak for “still very much a seller’s market.” Homes are selling in about a month on average, and buyers are basically matching asking price. In September, the county logged 856 new listings, 637 closed sales, and a median sale price of around $848,000.
On paper, that sounds almost sane compared to Silicon Valley’s $1.6–$2M typical single-family ticket. But zoom in and you start to see the pressure points — which, not coincidentally, are the exact places AI founders are going to want.
In Lamorinda, Orinda sales volume jumped about 50%, and prices there climbed roughly 14%, with the median sale price sitting around $2 million. In Pleasant Hill and Clayton, median prices are now above $1 million and have surged by double digits year-over-year (27% in Pleasant Hill, 18% in Clayton). San Ramon prices are up about 12%. Walnut Creek inventory is up ~20%, Concord ~30%, which tells you sellers are already starting to test the market.
Even where prices aren’t exploding, they’re not falling much. Contra Costa’s overall median sale price in September was about $787,000, down less than 1% compared to last year, and homes are still going pending in roughly a month. That is what “holding the line” looks like in a high-rate environment when a normal market would be softening.
Translation: we are in a holding pattern at the countywide level, but certain school districts and certain commute-friendly ZIPs are already behaving like miniature Palo Altos.
The timeline: When does the real AI squeeze hit?
Short version:
- Round 1 (now): AI money props up SF rents and keeps SF condos and Victorians from tanking. That’s already happening.
- Round 2 (next 6–18 months): Mid-career AI employees — the ones who just sold a few million dollars’ worth of stock in a secondary, or the Nvidia staffer whose ESPP shares just 20x’d — start looking East Bay. They don’t want $5K/month rent anymore. They want a backyard, a guest room for visiting parents, and a 2-car garage for their Rivian and their robotaxi side project.
- Round 3 (2–4 years out): IPOs, later secondary rounds, and ongoing vesting cycles hit. Remember: most tech equity vests over four years. That means the kid who joined Anthropic in 2024 and just watched the company hit a $183B valuation is going to finish vesting in 2028. Those final-year RSUs, plus whatever liquidity events Anthropic offers along the way, become down payments in Danville, Alamo, Diablo, and the hills above Lafayette.
If you’re a seller in Walnut Creek with a nicely staged 4-bed walking distance to good elementary, Round 2 and Round 3 are your payday.
If you’re a first-time buyer who grew up in Pleasant Hill and hoped to stay near family, Round 2 and Round 3 are where it could get brutal.
Why this could be better (worse?) than the last tech wave
Three reasons the AI wave could put even more stress on the 925 than the SaaS boom did:
1. Cash, not just approval letters.
In 2015, a lot of buyers were still financing. Now, we’re talking about buyers walking in with liquidity from secondary share sales, not just stock options they “hope” will be worth something someday. OpenAI literally just turned employee equity into billions of dollars of spendable cash without going public, and Anthropic is doing structured buybacks for staff at eye-watering valuations.
2. A smaller, richer talent pool.
Nvidia has about 36,000 employees, not hundreds of thousands. If even a sliver of that group decides Lamorinda is where they want to raise kids, they can push comps fast because they can simply outbid everyone, repeatedly, without blinking. Reports say roughly 80% of Nvidia employees are millionaires right now, and many are worth $25M-plus. That kind of buyer doesn’t negotiate over closing costs.
3. Frozen supply.
Contra Costa County is not building family-size single-family homes at scale inside the school districts people actually want. We’re adding infill apartments and ADUs (and a handful of super luxe, ginormous houses), sure, but we’re not dropping 200 new four-bedroom cul-de-sac houses in Orinda. The county was already at just ~2.5 months of inventory this fall, which realtors still classify as “hot.”
When you combine: very rich buyers + kid-ready suburban demand + basically fixed supply, you get upward pressure, fast.
OK, so what should normal people in the 925 expect?
Here’s the honest read.
If you already own in Lamorinda, Danville/Alamo/Diablo, San Ramon, or the nicer Walnut Creek school zones:
You’re sitting on exactly the product this new money will want. Expect more unsolicited notes in your mailbox from agents. Expect more cash offers. Expect comps to lurch upward in weird jumps, not smooth curves, whenever a newly-minted AI multimillionaire decides they “have to have” a particular cul-de-sac in Alamo.
If you’re trying to buy your first house in Pleasant Hill, Concord, Clayton, Martinez:
You’re in the next ring out. Those areas are already seeing double-digit price jumps and climbing medians over $1M in Pleasant Hill and Clayton.
If you’re betting on a crash:
Could rates or politics or a macro shock cool all of this? Absolutely. We just watched certain Silicon Valley zip codes dip a couple percent this year, and Contra Costa’s countywide median is basically flat versus last year.
But betting on a big, sustained East Bay crash while AI companies are literally handing engineers liquid seven-figure payouts is… bold.
Bottom line
The buckets of AI money are real, and they’re already dumping into Bay Area housing — just mostly on the SF side of the tunnel for now.
History says the next stop is our side of the hill, especially anywhere with a blue-ribbon elementary school, a 30- to 45-minute hybrid commute, and a backyard big enough for a trampoline and a cold plunge.
Round 1 is here. Round 2 is starting. Round 3 is basically scheduled for when those giant AI equity grants finish vesting.
If you live in the 925 and you’ve got a driveway, a lemon tree, and an extra bedroom, Silicon Valley 2.0 (3.0? 5.0? Who really knows at this point?) is coming for it.
