AI companies expanding beyond SF means rent spikes hitting Mountain View (OpenAI) and Oakland (Bezos' Prometheus). If you're a non-AI engineer, your salary growth won't keep pace with housing inflation driven by AI company comp packages. The delta between AI ML engineer total comp ($400K-$800K) and traditional SWE comp ($180K-$250K) is creating a two-tier housing market. Five-year projection: either pivot into AI infra/tooling or get pushed to Sacramento/Fresno commute zones. The real estate premium follows the compute clusters.