Sam Altman Joins Transition Team for New San Francisco Mayor

(Bloomberg) -- San Francisco Mayor-elect Daniel Lurie assembled a transition team that includes OpenAI co-founder Sam Altman, leveraging influential local leaders as the political newcomer takes the reins of the city’s bureaucracy.

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Altman is the highest-profile name on the incoming mayor’s 10-person transition team, which also includes Ned Segal, a onetime chief financial officer at Twitter and a co-chair of Lurie’s campaign. Other members include the former chief of staff to California Governor Gavin Newsom, former top officials in the fire and police departments and the chair of San Francisco’s Democratic Party.

“Every one of these incredible leaders brings a track record of shaking up the status quo to deliver results,” said Lurie.

Altman said in a statement that he is “excited to help the city I love, and where OpenAI was started, as it begins its next chapter with Mayor-elect Lurie stepping into his new role.”

Altman’s OpenAI is among the companies driving an artificial intelligence boom that has injected new life into San Francisco’s economy following a tech-sector downturn during the pandemic. The city says it leads US cities in job openings in the sector and hosts a growing office-space footprint for AI companies.

Lurie, 47, an heir to the Levi Strauss & Co. fortune, spent more than $8 million of his own money campaigning as a moderate and political outsider who would take tougher stances on homelessness and drug problems in the city. He beat the incumbent London Breed, who also campaigned on a tough-on-crime approach to the city’s problems.

Lurie’s election, fueled by dissatisfaction with homelessness and quality of life issues, underscored San Francisco’s slow recovery from the pandemic. The city’s downtown has struggled to fill office buildings left vacant by remote work while street-level homelessness and open-air drug markets have made many residents feel unsafe.

While Breed’s administration saw modest improvements in crime rates and the number of people living on the streets, issues like car break-ins and public safety perceptions remained key concerns for residents. Her latest budget for the year through June allocated $846 million for the housing and homelessness department, along with increased police staffing.

During his campaign, Lurie promised to cut through bureaucratic inefficiencies and declare a state of emergency to tackle the city’s fentanyl overdose crisis on his first day in office in January.

(Updates with details from seventh paragraph.)

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