As San Francisco becomes the sizzling hot nexus of the global AI revolution, ambitious young entrepreneurs are flocking to hatch their startups at hacker houses.
Hacker houses offer founders the chance to eat, breathe, and sleep, developing their startups while also making time for hackathons, raves, and pitch sessions.
There are a plethora of these houses in the Bay Area. Some offer palatial mansions complete with free rent and food, while others include little more than free wi-fi. Stays vary from a few weeks to as long as you want. Some are just starting their first cohort this month, while others have been around for over a decade.
Most founders find out about houses through word of mouth, and some do not even accept applications.
We asked founders and VCs for their top houses for 2025. Here are the selections, along with notable investors and founders for the more established houses.
Neighborhood: Hillsborough
Specialty: AI and community events
Notable alumni: Pika Labs, Martian, Portal
Notable investors: Eric Schmidt, Marc Andreessen, Adam D’Angelo
Situated in a lux $68 million Hillsborough mansion featuring a koi pond, pool, and movie theater, AGI House is more of a hacker mansion. Launched in 2023, it bunks eight to 10 founders and researchers who can secure investments of up to $1 million in funding through its in-house venture fund or study at its applied research arm. AGI House has rapidly become the nexus of San Francisco’s booming AI community through a stacked calendar of free dinners, hackathons, and fireside chats open to AI builders on a merit basis.
Famous alums include founding resident Demi Guo, who founded Pika Labs, a buzzy AI video generation startup that has raised hundreds of millions in venture funding.
Neighborhood: Twin Peaks
Specialty: AI
Notable alumni: Andrej Karpathy, Max Novendstern, and Anton Osika
Notable investors: Index Ventures, Anthropic, Greylock
As the Hillsborough mansion gets most of the attention, former Google researcher Jeremy Nixon started a rival San Francisco AGI House last year amidst an acrimonious fight over who can claim the “AGI House” moniker. If that is not confusing enough, Nixon also ran another house branded as NeoGenesis and was home to Andrej Karpathy (Tesla, OpenAI, Eureka) and Max Novendstern (Worldcoin).
Whatever the name, there’s no formal application, as you can only get in through warm introductions.
“Ideally, they have some conception of the trajectory of human civilization and how their creative entrepreneurial life can alter it for the better,” Nixon told BI.
Neighborhood: Alamo Square
Specialty: Technical repeat founders focused on AI
Notable alumni: Ramp, Pave, Fabric
Notable investors: Marc Andreessen, Chris Dixon, Naval Ravikant
This could be considered the Stanford of hacker houses. HFØ describes itself as “the most selective AI residency for repeat founders.” Its famous backers include a16z’s Marc Andreessen and Chris Dixon, as well as angel investor Naval Ravikant and Google’s AI Fund. Once admitted to the highly selective program, 10 founders undergo an intense 12-week program at a mansion near Alamo Square Park that includes not only lodging but also food and laundry. There is also $250,000 in “uncapped” funding in exchange for a 2.5% fee. The first class produced three unicorns: Ramp, Pave, and Fabric. Just don’t expect much partying. HFØ is alcohol-free.
Neighborhood: The Mission
Notable alumni: Scale AI, Pylon, Workflow, New Lantern
Specialty: Younger builders and b2b founders
Founded by a group of teenage Thiel Fellows in 2013, Mission Control, known as MC, occupies a 10-bedroom house in the Mission. Young Residents often move into the house before they have funding, a company, cofounders, or even an idea. Eventually, they get access to the Mission Street Capital fund, founded by three house members to back other members.
“What sets MC apart is that it’s a community first and foremost: we look for folks who will contribute to the community and want to be actively involved,” resident founder Conor Brennan Burke told BI. “Part of the goal of MC is to form genuine friendships for life as we all go through the transformative experience of building a company.”
There is also a “satellite” down the block designed to give five founders a short-term launching pad in San Francisco. Last year, the house hosted a 3-day “AI simulated party” where guests received an AI character customized to their personality.
Neighborhood: Nob Hill
Specialty: AI and Web3
Once accepted to the three-month cohort, founders live in a 15-bedroom house featuring monthly hackathons and demo days, during which they pitch VCs and angel investors. But it’s not all coding. Earlier this year, Accelr8 hosted a raucous Mark Zuckerberg-themed rave.
Neighborhood: North Beach
Specialty: Female founders
Most hacker houses are still overwhelmingly male-dominated. Enter HackHerHouse, which launched last year with an inaugural class of seven and bills itself as the first all-female hacker house in the Bay Area. Rent is subsidized so founders can focus on funding their companies instead of their housing.
Specialty: Immigrant founders
Launching this month, Capi House says it is a “home (not a hacker house” for immigrant founders in SF.” Capi, an acronym that is a nod to the cash assistance program for immigrants, features both shared and private rooms as well as a guest room and spare couch for short-term visitors to crash. Every Friday ends with “weekly ship its,” where housemates meet in the living room to keep each other accountable. There are also workshops on how to fundraise and deal with immigration issues, plus a Bollywood music party. When applications went live in February for the first cohort, over 100 people applied in 24 hours.
Read the full article here
