Ashley Hayes

marketing strategy & comms consultant | tech • media • wine | formerly at @google @yelp & far too many startups | she/her

[Ashley Hayes @asheshayes]

Sooo if @Lin_Manuel walks into your dream and says, “write that book,” and then tells you to wake up so you remember, causing you to sit wide awake in the middle of the night, you should write that book, right? 🤔 📖

[Annie Wu (all socials: @annie_wu_22) @Annie_Wu_22]

.@mackenziescott you have the opportunity to do an extremely funny (and genuinely heroic) thing right now

[Dennis Goris | Cartoons @DennisGoris]

Good night. #washingtonpost

[Michael J. Miraflor @michaelmiraflor]

We used to call this transmedia planning (shout out to Henry Jenkins and MIT Media Lab). When I worked on HBO we’d activate more than a dozen supplemental niche touch points for some campaigns to supplement the main media buy and PR push. Didn’t matter if these elements didn’t scale. It was all in service of the narrative promoting the premiere. Gave super fans a treasure hunt spread across the entire internet. We had a True Blood audio upload on a random platform that got ~1000 unique streamers (same day we did a $200K IGN roadblock). Those 1000 true fans mattered just as much as the 1M impressions we got on the HPTO. This was before everyone got obsessed with performance metrics. Before algorithmic feeds. Media planning was storytelling and craft. The most special fan service things didn’t scale bc that wasn’t the point.

[Ashley Hayes @asheshayes]

still obsessed with this experiential activation last month for @tryramp great job @kendallhtucker💐 https://t.co/7s8K3ey5DC via @MorningBrew

[Katia Ameri @KatiaAmeri]

SF was never dead.

3 years ago, people said the city was over. There were stories of empty towers and headlines about doom. Then AI hit escape velocity, and you could feel the energy reignite.

This past year, AI companies have taken millions of square feet across the city (1). The marquee names keep expanding. Anthropic added ~100,000 square feet across from its SoMa HQ (2).

Rents are on the rise again. Hacker houses are back (3)(4). SF had what others didn’t.

What changed

San Francisco stacked the right inputs for this cycle. Dense talent, fast capital, and tight feedback loops. In AI, those loops matter. Agents get good by shipping, breaking, and retraining. Things compound when researchers, product leads, and investors are within a stone’s throw.

The numbers tell the same story. U.S. startup funding in the first half of 2025 jumped ~76% year over year, on pace for the second-best year ever, with AI responsible for a historic share of the dollars (5). By mid-year, GenAI funding had already surpassed all of 2024 (6). Globally, AI startups took ~53% of all VC dollars in H1 2025 (7), and in the U.S., AI accounted for ~64% of deal value (5). The Bay Area drew nearly $70B of the $134.6B in global AI funding in 2024, and it’s still the gravitational center in 2025 (8).

What we’re seeing

To understand why SF is back, look at where investors are leaning in. Recent a16z AI investments span agentic CX, coding, creative tools, and multimodality. Decagon, building autonomous customer-support agents, raised a $131M Series C co-led by a16z (9). Cursor, the AI code editor and “vibe coding” tool many engineers live in, raised a $900M round (10). Krea, the creative AI interface for images/video, just closed an $83M round (12).

Risk capital

The Bay Area’s edge has always been access to the “right money” at the “right stage.” Later-stage capital is returning, and big pools are forming to fund AI’s compute-heavy scale-up phase (16).

The talent wars

We’ve all read the headlines. Meta has reportedly offered top researchers pay packages up to ~$300M over four years, with first-year comp figures reportedly above $100M for a small number of leadership roles (18). Whatever the exact figures, the platforms are competing for a very small pool of elite talent, and much of that is happening in the Bay Area.

At the same time, SignalFire’s 2025 report shows Anthropic near 80% two-year retention, with OpenAI ~67% and Meta ~64% (19). Labs with strong cultures tend to retain their people. They also tend to cluster around SF.

Cities have product-market fit, too. In 2025, San Francisco is a product that AI builders want.

If you want to experience the energy for yourself, come build with us during SF @Techweek_ (Oct 6–12)!

[Ashley Hayes @asheshayes]

@empressatlantis Fresh blonding for the new moon in Leo 🦁

[Ashley Hayes @asheshayes]

@feederofcats How is he with small dogs? I have a friendly shih tzu dying for a kitty sibling

[Ashley Hayes @asheshayes]

Within about a few minutes of the tornado warning, I got notifications for peeps swiping right - only in sf would y’all think now is a great time to catch up on my dating apps lol 🤦🏼‍♀️

[Ashley Hayes @asheshayes]

Need help launching your product, your app, your idea? 💡 let’s chat ☎️ https://t.co/otMIfelsHR

[Ashley Hayes @asheshayes]

Nobody:

Me when @soterwines is opened:

[Ashley Hayes @asheshayes]

@kmelkhat Super curious how many dates / proposals you’ve cultivated from all this because it’s like MIL/family cat nip

[Pop Base @PopBase]

Apple announces they are officially replacing the Lightning cable with the universal USB-C charger for iPhone 15. #AppleEvent

[Sophie Vershbow @svershbow]

Imagine looking this good in 70% humidity.

[Ashley Hayes @asheshayes]

Glad to hear the trend of audible brand logos are carrying forward, such as @sperry new sonic logo 🌊 https://t.co/HUmPu0lZxJ via @MarketingBrew

[Ashley Hayes @asheshayes]

@EvanRomano Ok gotta ask - which show?!

[Molly McPherson @MollyMcPherson]

My thanks to everyone who helped me compile this Top 10 (Twitter) PR Crises for 2022 including @molls @talknats @DougGraham4 @ChrisRuthPR @sbrucecanada @ericcsilverman @eneticon82 @katwife @bchesnutt @wgfollett @eneticon82

https://t.co/Gc3SbT4p10

[Dr Dale Whelehan @DrDaleford]

🙌 THE 4 DAY WORK WEEK HAS HIT IRELAND WITH ASTONISHING RESULTS. 🙌

The Irish Findings are as follows:
• 100% of the companies involved are continuing with the 4-Day work week ➡
• 85% of companies which reported data on revenue reported growth in revenue 📈 (1/X)

[Ashley Hayes @asheshayes]

The chaos that is Amazon sizing - like wtf is this 🥹

[Ashley Hayes @asheshayes]

relationship update: going steady with @duolingo 💋

[Zach Kornfeld @korndiddy]

Things may change, but I will always know how to strike a goddamn pose.