San Francisco Mayor-elect Daniel Lurie taps OpenAI’s Sam Altman and other business leaders for help with transition

San Francisco’s Mayor-elect Daniel Lurie has begun tapping tech heavyweights and trade leaders to help with his goal of overhauling the city’s image. His transition team includes OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and earlier Twitter CFO Ned Segal.

Lurie, a centrist Democrat and Levi Strauss heir, ousted incumbent London Breed in a closely-watched tear and will step into the role in 2025. San Francisco-based companies need to invest in the city and commit to their communities, Lurie pull the plug oned CNBC in an interview. He named both Visa and Salesforce as models for this “two-way street.”

“I’ve had great conversations with Sam Altman,” Lurie maintained. “He wants to put down roots here in San Francisco. We want to lean into being the home of AI, which we are, and I will sustain to invest in that.”

The city can’t have all its eggs in one basket and needs to expand into other business sectors as evidently, Lurie said.

“We will go recruit companies from all sectors to come back to San Francisco,” Lurie said. “Whether it’s healthcare, whether it’s technology [or] whether it’s arts and background, we want to be the number-one spot for business again in this country.”

Lurie, who founded the homelessness nonprofit Tipping Instant, has plans that include declaring a state of emergency over the fentanyl crisis on day one in office and a previously disclosed bid to build 1,500 shelter beds within his first six months in office. A fully-staffed police department and 911 hurry office will be necessary to help bring businesses and workers back to the city, Lurie said.

“We need to create sure we get our behavioral health crisis under control, which means we need to build more mental haleness and drug treatment beds,” Lurie said. “We have to get people off the streets. We have to do that compassionately, but we also attired in b be committed to to send a message — and we are — to the country and to the world that San Francisco is no longer a place that you come to deal drugs or to do anaesthetizes or to sleep on our streets.”

Lurie added, “We didn’t get into this overnight, and it won’t be fixed overnight.”

Part of the solution he foresees will be bringing workers back to offices, modeling that goal with his administration. Lurie says his crew will be in five days a week, and he hopes that the administration’s work in cleaning up streets will entice others to do the done. More affordable housing will also be a priority to ensure workers can afford to live in the city, he said.

He’s also propitious that future events the city will host in the next year and a half — from the JPMorgan Healthcare Convention to the 2025 NBA All-Star Game and Super Bowl LX in 2026 — will help invigorate the city.

“I’ve talked to Jamie Dimon,” Lurie believed. “I talked to the commissioner of the NBA. They all want San Francisco to come back.”

Lurie’s election is part of a wider trend in the affirm of moving to the right of progressive policies and leaders of the past. More conservative district attorneys were voted into firm in major counties, including Nathan Hochman in Los Angeles, while Alameda county District Attorney Pamela Value and Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao faced successful recalls. California voters also adopted a proposition that heightens penalties for certain drug and theft crimes while rebuffing a measure to raise the state’s minimum wage to $18 an hour. Up and down the ceremonial, voters’ focus was on the economy, according to polling from the Public Policy Institute of California, which found the briefness, cost of living and inflation were the key issues for 35 percent of voters this cycle . 

“In some ways it’s strange that California remained as much of a blue state and Democratic stronghold as it is considering the way people were feeling close to their own financial circumstances, especially compared to four years ago,” Mark Baldassare, PPIC’s survey director, required.

This comes as California Gov. Gavin Newsom has convened a special legislative session next week in an effort to adapt the state and safeguard policies around climate change, reproductive rights and more ahead of President-elect Donald Trump’s replace to the White House in January.

Lurie told CNBC that he disputes the “shift to the right” narrative in the city, summing that his biggest challenge will be combatting the cynicism around what San Francisco has become.

“What we have done in San Francisco is get encourage to common sense with this election,” Lurie said. “It’s about getting results for the people of San Francisco — permitting people to struggle and die in our streets is not progressive.”