San Francisco’s AI Revival Sets Off Race for New Office Towers

In downtown San Francisco, a vacant pit ringed by concrete and steel has come to embody the city’s fortunes — from boom to bust, to nascent turnaround.

China Oceanwide Holdings bought the lot in 2014 and spent more than $1 billion on what was meant to be the city’s second-tallest tower, before losing the property to foreclosure. It sat idle for years as San Francisco struggled with soaring vacancies and a downtown written off as uninvestable.

Last month, a local developer agreed to pay $60 million for the site, relaunching the 900-foot office tower to capitalize on the tech hub’s AI-fueled ...