Even as San Francisco’s downtown core turned into a ghost town during the pandemic, the Ross Dress for Less on Market Street kept the crowds coming. Now, the beloved discount retailer is about to share its building with one of the hottest AI startups in the Bay Area.

Bedrock Robotics, a San Francisco-based company building autonomous construction equipment powered by artificial intelligence, just signed a lease for the top two floors of 799 Market Street, that’s about 35,000 square feet of prime real estate sitting directly above Ross. The eight-story building on the corner of Fourth and Market streets had been struggling with office vacancies until San Francisco investor Sansome Street Advisors picked it up for $44 million last year.

Bedrock is coming off a serious funding round that valued the startup at $1.75 billion. The company raised $270 million last month, with backing from Alphabet’s investment arm, 8VC, and Nvidia’s venture division. That kind of cash injection signals real confidence in the company’s mission: creating AI systems that can be installed on construction equipment to automate heavy labor.

The startup was founded in 2024 and currently operates out of a smaller office at 703 Market Street. The team includes some seriously experienced people, CEO Boris Sofman, CTO Kevin Peterson, and cofounder Ajay Gummall all previously worked at Waymo, Google’s autonomous vehicle company. That pedigree matters in the AI space.

Here’s where it gets interesting for downtown San Francisco’s recovery. The area has been absolutely decimated over the past few years. Mid-Market’s office vacancy rate sits at 46.8%, SoMa is at 50%, and Union Square is at 24.2%. The San Francisco Centre Mall, which was right next to this Ross location, shut down for good in December after years of financial struggles. So landing a $1.75 billion AI company as a tenant is genuinely significant for the neighborhood’s comeback.

Sansome Street Advisors managed to fully lease the entire 143,605-square-foot property by leveraging their lower purchase price compared to the previous owner, who paid over $141 million for the building back in 2016. The company already leased the fifth floor to cybersecurity firm Semgrep in August. The floors that Bedrock is taking could eventually be connected via an internal staircase.

The move represents a broader trend of AI companies finding space in San Francisco’s struggling commercial real estate market. While landlords are desperate for tenants and office buildings sit empty across the city, high-growth startups backed by serious venture capital are moving in and getting sweetheart deals. For downtown, having a cutting-edge robotics company with ties to Alphabet and Nvidia operating upstairs from Ross might just be the kind of anchor tenant the neighborhood needed to start turning things around.