For the last few years, if you heard AI boom, you probably thought San Francisco.
I did too.
Then I saw a number that made me look twice.
Los Angeles and Orange County already have 28,600 AI workers. That makes us the 7th-largest AI employment market in North America, according to a new CBRE report.
More than Boston.
More than Chicago.
More than Atlanta.
I wasn't expecting that.
Then I started looking at Culver City.
And the story got more interesting.
A SMALL LEASE CAUGHT MY ATTENTION
It started with a 10,300-square-foot office lease.
Normally, I wouldn't think much of it.
But the tenant was different.
Dotmo, a new AI company spun out of Snap, chose Platform in Culver City for its first headquarters. The company is working on AI for gaming and interactive entertainment. CoStar called the lease an early sign that AI could help bring demand back to Los Angeles offices. Ten thousand square feet won't change the Culver City office market.
But it made me ask:
Why Culver City?
Then I looked around.
APPLE IS ALREADY HERE
Apple has been making a huge bet on Culver City.
Its new campus is more than half a million square feet.
But the jobs caught my attention this time.
Apple is advertising Culver City positions in its Machine Learning and AI group. One is a Senior Product Data Scientist across Apple's media services. Another is a Lead AI/ML Engineer on generative AI and AI agents. There are also machine-learning engineers on AI systems for Apple's products. These aren't jobs that might exist five years from now.
Apple is hiring for them now.
And Apple isn't alone.
AMAZON IS BUILDING AI INTO HOLLYWOOD
A few minutes away, Amazon MGM Studios is hiring a Senior AI Executive in Culver City.
The job is fascinating.
Amazon wants this person testing AI tools and putting them into real film and television production. That includes production teams, post-production and visual effects.
The salary range?
$141,300 to $191,100.
Think about what that means.
This isn't a startup raising its first round.
This is one of the world's largest companies building AI into how Hollywood makes content.
And then there's Sony.
SONY IS DOING IT TOO
Sony Pictures is headquartered right in Culver City.
On August 31, Sony posted a new position:
Director, AI Programs & Enablement.
The job is to help Sony use AI throughout the company.
Production.
Post-production.
Marketing.
Corporate operations.
Sony says the person will take successful AI projects and scale them across the business.
Again, this isn't a prediction.
The job is open now.
So now we have:
Apple hiring AI and machine-learning people.
Amazon MGM building AI into film production.
Sony Pictures building AI across its business.
And a Snap AI spinoff choosing Culver City for its first headquarters. That's when the Dotmo lease started looking different to me.
MAYBE LOS ANGELES DOESN'T NEED TO BECOME SILICON VALLEY
I think people may be looking at Los Angeles the wrong way. We're probably not going to beat San Francisco at being San Francisco.
We don't need to.
Los Angeles already owns something valuable.
Entertainment.
Movies.
Television.
Music.
Gaming.
Advertising.
Creators.
Some of the most valuable intellectual property in the world.
Now AI is moving into all of those businesses.
And a lot of those businesses already sit within a few miles of Culver City.
That could matter.
Industries cluster.
Companies want to be near talent.
Talent wants to be near other companies.
Startups form when people leave bigger companies.
Investors follow the startups.
More talent follows the money.
Eventually a few leases that didn't seem important start looking like the beginning of something bigger.
28,600 IS THE NUMBER I'M WATCHING
CBRE says Los Angeles and Orange County already have 28,600 AI workers as of June 2026. San Francisco is still far ahead at almost 99,000.
New York has almost 68,000.
Seattle has about 42,000.
But LA/Orange County is already number seven in North America.
That's a real workforce.
And if that workforce keeps growing, it shows up in real estate. We've already seen what AI can do to an office market. In San Francisco, AI companies have accounted for roughly 30% of office leasing since 2019 — nearly 11 million square feet. I'm not saying that's about to happen in Los Angeles.
We're nowhere near that yet.
But that's exactly why I'm watching now.
By the time everyone agrees a neighborhood has changed, the opportunity usually isn't the same anymore.
THERE'S ALSO A PART OF THIS STORY PEOPLE DON'T WANT TO TALK ABOUT
AI is going to create jobs.
It's also going to change jobs.
And some jobs will disappear.
CBRE says the same thing.
Its view is that AI will probably change what people do more than it changes the overall number of jobs. That could be especially important in Los Angeles. Think about how many people here work in editing, production, visual effects, animation, advertising, design and other creative businesses.
AI is heading straight toward those industries.
That's the scary part.
But it's also why the new jobs matter.
Amazon isn't hiring someone to talk about AI.
It's hiring someone to put AI into actual productions.
Sony isn't hiring someone to study AI.
It's hiring someone to spread it across the company. Apple isn't talking about machine learning as something coming someday.
It's hiring engineers now.
Something is changing.
THE OPERATOR TAKE
I look at this differently than a technology investor.
I'm looking at the real estate.
Where will these companies go?
Where will the employees live?
Where will they eat?
What office buildings will they want?
What apartments will they rent?
And what happens to the neighborhoods around them?
That's why I'm watching Culver City.
And for full Transparency I own a few blocks away so I am watching closely.
Not because Dotmo leased 10,300 square feet.
That's a small deal.
I'm watching because Apple is expanding here. Amazon is hiring AI people here. Sony is hiring AI leadership here. And now a Snap AI company has put its headquarters here.
One lease means nothing.
A few leases might mean nothing.
But when the companies, jobs and real estate all start pointing toward the same place, I pay attention.
Los Angeles already has 28,600 AI workers.
The bigger question is where the next 10,000 will go.
Culver City is starting to give us a clue and it is one of the best markets in the City.