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Sam Altman, OpenAI’s chief executive, said the company was paying $6.5 billion to buy IO, a one-year-old start-up created by Jony Ive, a former top Apple executive who designed the iPhone. The all-stock deal, which effectively unites Silicon Valley royalty, is intended to usher in what the two men call “a new family of products” for the age of artificial general intelligence, or A.G.I., which is shorthand for a future technology that achieves human-level intelligence.
$6.5 billion is a damn good valuation for a one-year-old startup, which says something about the current AI cycle. But what you may be less familiar with are Jony Ive's efforts to revitalize Jackson Square in downtown San Francisco. In a recent interview with Monocle, published in their June 2025 issue, it was reported that his company LoveFrom (check out their website, it's fun) has spent nearly $100 million on buildings in the area, equating to at least half a city block.
Jackson Square is one of the oldest areas of San Francisco. It dates back to the 1849 gold rush and is currently on the National Register of Historic Places. Ive also has a soft spot for the area. Apparently it was where he first landed in the US in 1989, after receiving a bursary following his graduation from Newcastle Polytechnic (now Northumbria University). So this is allegedly not about money:
“There’s no fiscal benefit for us in investing in these buildings; these aren’t a means to an end, if that end is generating revenue,” says Ive.
From a real estate perspective, I don't think this first part is true. There likely will be a fiscal benefit. As of the first quarter of 2025, downtown San Francisco's office vacancy rate was hovering somewhere above 30%. The pandemic infamously hollowed out the city and led to a bunch of negative externalities. But the city has always been a place of extreme boom and busts, and a place of disruption. It will reinvent itself.
So whether or not he cares about fiscal benefit, I think Ive has been accumulating property at exactly the right time — when almost everyone else is pessimistic on the city. At the same time, he's going above and beyond what a typical landlord would do. For instance, LoveFrom, quite famously, provided a pro bono rebrand for a much-loved and 50-year-old bookstore in the area, William Stout Architectural Books. The design agency allocates time for side projects just "for the love of doing it."
This is a form of city building that seems far less common in Canada. I'm talking about the scenario where a singular rich person decides that they really love a place and want to revitalize it. The other example that I have in my mind is Dan Gilbert and downtown Detroit. As of 2024, his firm Bedrock was reported to own 131 properties and approximately 18 million square feet of space, making him the largest and most prominent landlord in downtown.
I would also argue that this is the most effective way to do it. Because who is going to give more shits: the person running a fund with a 5-7 year time horizon and an IRR clock, or the intrinsically motivated person with a deep personal attachment to a place who wants nothing more than to see it thrive and succeed? My bet is on the latter. It also doesn't hurt when you strike an all-stock deal with OpenAI for $6.5 billion.
Cover photo by Frames For Your Heart on Unsplash
The first thing that stands out to me in this European office vacancy rate chart from Savills is the difference between Paris-La Défense (~15%) and Paris-CBD (2%).
For those of you who maybe aren't familiar, La Défense is the largest purpose-built business district in Europe. It houses upwards of 40 million square feet of office space and covers about 1,400 acres. It's also more or less where Paris decided to allow and put tall buildings. Though, it is about 3 km west of the city limits.
The Paris-CBD, on the other hand, is within the city limits and I'm assuming it refers to the quartier central des affaires (QCA). But regardless of the exact boundary definitions, what we are comparing here is a purpose-built business district to an older supply-constrained central one. And clearly there are, right now, meaningful differences in demand for the offices in these two areas.
What's also interesting is that there's a meaningful difference in the rents. According to Reuters, office space in La Défense is on average about 50% cheaper than the QCA. This, to me, is a reminder that monofunctional urban areas tend to be less resilient over time. And that's why La Défense is actively working to add additional uses, such as more residential.
But it's not just about uses. The area will also need to contend with the fact that it has a vastly different kind of built form; one that isn't fine-grained and walkable like the QCA. This matters.
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