AI firm Replit leaves S.F. for Foster City
Amjad Masad, the founder and CEO of Replit, an artificial intelligence company in the Bay Area valued at over $1 billion, announced this week that the company has relocated its headquarters from San Francisco to Foster City.
The move was motivated by a desire for a more “livable” city and to establish a new home base for the AI coding startup, akin to how Google is associated with Mountain View and Apple with Cupertino.
“The ‘why’ we’re leaving is boring, sad, and predictable (crime, dysfunction, etc), so instead let me tell you why we chose Foster City,” Madad wrote in a thread on Twitter explaining his decision to move the company. “Foster City embodies the American postwar optimism and the long-lost California progrowth mentality.”
It was not immediately clear how many employees the company has in San Francisco, though Crunchbase lists 100-250. The company did not respond to a request for comment.
Founded by Masad and Haya Odeh in 2016, Replit is backed by venture firms such as Andreessen Horowitz and Khosla Ventures. Its former headquarters were near Third and Harrison streets in San Francisco.
Masad, who has previously criticized the living conditions in San Francisco, lauded Foster City for its innovative civic engineering and its origins as a master-planned community. He highlighted its lagoon system, designed to combat sea level rise.
He also noted that the tech-infused community of over 30,000 residents is “relatively affordable” compared with the rest of the Bay Area.
But rental costs in Foster City are in fact almost 20% higher than average for the San Francisco Metro Area, and nearly 10% higher than the city of San Francisco, according to estimates from Zillow.
He also called it a “fun place to live or hang out.”
“The city is super livable,” Masad said. “When Haya and I moved to California, we first took residence there and, in fact, incorporated Replit here. Our first bank was Wells Fargo, a few steps from our new office.”
In response to a follower’s comment about Foster City being quieter than the bustling city, Masad saw this as a benefit.
“Quiet is good,” he replied. “That’s why Silicon Valley worked — the most fun thing to do is build computers and software.”
Despite Replit leaving San Francisco, other AI companies are expanding in the city. The Chronicle reported last month that OpenAI could be eyeing an expansion in the area, after signing a huge lease in San Francisco’s Mission Bay neighborhood late last year. And Amazon said in the fall that it will invest up to $4 billion into San Francisco generative AI juggernaut Anthropic — which signed its own big lease last year — taking a minority ownership in the company.