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otion, a once-struggling AI startup, has made a remarkable comeback in the "AI capital of the world" with a 105,000-square-foot office lease in Downtown San Francisco. The company has signed a 10-year deal to occupy five floors at the historic Monadnock Building, located at 685 Market Street in the Financial District. Built in 1907 after the San Francisco earthquake, the Beaux Arts building was last renovated in 2016 and had been mostly empty since Uber listed it for sublease in 2019.

    Notion will exit its current headquarters in the Mission District, which it occupied through a sublease in 2021. The company's resurgence is attributed to remote work and backing from notable investors, with a valuation of $10 billion in 2021. Notion has also launched an artificial intelligence assistant and joins a growing group of AI firms finding new offices in San Francisco.

    The city's office vacancy rate has risen above 37% due to the shift to remote work led by tech firms. However, AI companies have moved in to help fill the gap. OpenAI, creator of ChatGPT, signed a deal for 486,600 square feet of offices in Mission Bay last year and another 315,000-square-foot lease next door. ScaleAI snagged a 180,000-square-foot office sublease from Airbnb, tripling its offices in San Francisco.

    Since OpenAI released ChatGPT in 2022, AI companies have leased over 1.7 million square feet of offices in the city. In the past seven years, such firms have leased a total of 4.3 million square feet of offices in an otherwise contracting market.