Jeff Bezos’ Prometheus Leases Offices in San Francisco

Jeff Bezos’ artificial intelligence ambitions are giving a San Francisco office landlord a potentially lucrative payoff.

Prometheus, the Amazon founder’s AI startup, has reportedly leased an entire waterfront office building from the Sobrato Organization, taking 180,000 square feet at 1 Harrison Street, the San Francisco Chronicle reported, citing multiple industry insiders. Prometheus has reportedly leased all six floors at the One Harrison building. If finalized, the lease would deliver the single tenant Sobrato had been seeking for the property.

Sobrato paid more than $80 million for the building in 2023, betting it could reposition the property for a new generation of tech companies. The refreshed building, formerly occupied by the Gap subsidiary Athleta, features an updated interior and a redesigned fourth-floor corner office, once used by Gap co-founder Don Fisher.

Prometheus already occupies 30,000 square feet at nearby 101 Mission Street, but the company has been searching for additional space. The office lease would complement its growing physical footprint. The startup also leased a 100,000-square-foot warehouse in west Oakland this summer for its AI-focused product design and manufacturing work.

The reported deal comes as San Francisco’s office market remains far from a full recovery, with vacancy at nearly 28 percent in the third quarter, per the Chronicle. Still, the city recorded five consecutive quarters of positive net absorption as AI companies including OpenAI, Anthropic and Databricks committed to major leases.

Prometheus was founded last year by Bezos and former Alphabet executive Vik Bajaj, who co-founded Google Life Sciences. Prometheus is developing AI tools for engineering and manufacturing, with ambitions to automate the design and production of everything from jet planes to computer chips and drug compounds. The company launched with $6.2 billion in backing and raised another $12 billion this summer, reaching a $41 billion valuation. Its investors include J. P. Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs and BlackRock.

— Chris Malone Méndez