SF home where Sam Altman and Greg Brockman built ChatGPT lists
The San Francisco apartment where Sam Altman and Greg Brockman first got OpenAI off the ground, located at 2977A 21st St., just hit the market for $1,545,000.
The home is a two-level Victorian flat on a nondescript block between Folsom Street and Treat Avenue in the Mission District. Brockman was renting the space when he and Altman started the nonprofit that would eventually command the world's attention with its flagship product, ChatGPT.
"Greg's living room ... served as the original 'office' for the small startup - before they moved to OpenAI headquarters," said listing agent Shane Ray in an email to SFGATE. The three-bedroom, two-bathroom and roughly 1,800-square-foot space has been fully renovated and features vaulted ceilings, white oak floors and a private deck off the primary suite overlooking a shared garden.
The apartment sits in the heart of the neighborhood, which the listing describes as placing you "right at the center of it, with a story that helped shape the future." Beyond the lore, according to Ray, the building's facade was recently used as a filming location for "Artificial," the forthcoming drama about OpenAI directed by "Challengers" and "Call Me By Your Name" director Luca Guadagnino.
"Artificial" stars Andrew Garfield - who apparently has a penchant for tech startup founder roles - as Altman and Cooper Hoffman as Brockman. The film follows the chaotic 2023 period when Altman was fired and rehired by the company's board, and it was seen shooting all over San Francisco last summer.
The 21st Street apartment will be joining a small and storied group of tech founder homes in the Bay Area that have taken on a life of their own. The most famous is likely the Los Altos garage where Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak put together the first Apple computers in 1976. In 2013, the Los Altos Historical Commission voted unanimously to designate the property as a historic resource, with staff citing that the significance was not due to its architecture but "the property's association with an event and an individual of historic significance," CNN wrote.
Then there's the Facebook house - a six-bedroom Los Altos rental where Mark Zuckerberg, Dustin Moskovitz and Sean Parker lived during the summer of 2004 for $5,500 a month. After being briefly listed for sale, the house went back on the market as a $11,000-a-month rental in July 2022. Moskovitz publicly disputed the whole premise and said the landlord had fabricated much of the background story. There is "nothing historic about this house," he tweeted at the time. "We launched Facebook from the Harvard dorm."
For anyone who wants to stand in the living room where one of the world's most significant companies got its start, open house tours will be held this Sunday, April 19, and Tuesday, April 21.
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