Two SF supervisors are racing to draft tenant protections ahead of confidential IPO filings from Anthropic and OpenAI, valued near $1.8 trillion, that could mint hundreds of new local millionaires.
Anthropic posted a research associate role for its biology team on Greenhouse at $65,000 to $85,000 a year this month. The lower end is below 60% of San Francisco's median income under the 2026 HUD area median income limits for the city's housing market area, as Mission Local reported on July 10. The job calls for aseptic technique, microbiology, and other hands-on bench work.
The average San Francisco studio rented for $2,595 as of July 8, per Zillow, as cited by Mission Local, roughly 48% of a $65,000 gross salary before taxes. The Greenhouse listing says nothing about equity grants, only that employees may donate already-vested shares to charity through a matching program.
Anthropic confidentially filed a draft S-1 with the SEC after a reported $65 billion Series H at a $965 billion post-money valuation. OpenAI has filed its own confidential S-1 at a reported $852 billion private valuation. Both filings are about making employee equity tradable. Both companies sit in San Francisco. The biology research associate is on the wrong side of a gap the rest of each company is about to widen.
"Anthropic should be embarrassed, 65-85k for masters-level techs in the Bay Area is utterly shameful," Jacob Boysen, a Bay Area genome engineer, wrote on X. "$65k to help build the future of biology in San Francisco. The first experiment is whether you can survive on that." Paula Dozsa, an iOS engineer, added the same week. Both posts are reactions, not a survey of the local scientific workforce. Anthropic declined to comment to Mission Local, and the listing remained live as of July 10.
Two San Francisco supervisors are now trying to build tools around the collision before any of those IPOs land. District 6 Supervisor Matt Dorsey told Mission Local his biggest fear is "the market pressure that goes along with SF residents who are suddenly going to be enjoying disproportionate wealth, and that we're going to see more rent hikes that equal eviction notices." He is exploring a proposal to give the Rent Board standing authority to assist tenants hit by increases above California's 5% annual rent cap. Supervisor Myrna Melgar is separately drafting legislation to tighten the city's "bad faith eviction" definition. Neither has been introduced; both will have to clear committee, the Board of Supervisors, and the summer recess.
A separate housing fight is already closer to a vote. The Planning Commission approved 4-2 a measure cutting the inclusionary affordable-housing requirement on new market-rate and luxury projects from an average of 15% to 5%, per the San Francisco Chronicle and 48hills' coverage of the hearing. The Board of Supervisors is scheduled to take it up Tuesday, the same board cycle Mission Local flagged. That vote would shrink the share of below-market units in new construction by roughly two-thirds, at the same moment supervisors say they are racing to build tenant protections against outside displacement pressure.
The biology posting pays someone to do bench work in a city where the same company is preparing to disperse equity through a public offering. None of the in-motion policy levers touches the salary floor inside the company itself. Dorsey and Melgar still need to clear introductions, committee hearings, and a full Board of Supervisors vote; the inclusionary cut has its own July 14 deadline. Anthropic's recruiter is still pitching the role.