What’s the first thing you’d do with $6.5 billion? If you’re Jony Ive, you buy more real estate.
After spending the pandemic buying up the better part of a block in San Francisco’s Jackson Square neighborhood, the elusive British designer of the iPhone dropped nearly $73 million in one day last month on four houses in Belvedere.
Appearing on maps as an appendage to Tiburon, the small incorporated city is an ulta-exclusive enclave surrounded by water, with views of the Golden Gate Bridge and San Francisco skyline.
The Chronicle first identified Ive as the purchaser of the homes. According to listing data, his entities bought three consecutive houses at the end of a narrow court on Golden Gate Avenue, while another is on Beach Road.
The largest of the homes — with five bedrooms, 11 bathrooms, and four fireplaces — sold for $43.5 million. The annual tax bill for that property last clocked in at $590,000 — 28 times higher than the median bill in Belvedere Tiburon. Per Zillow, the average value for a single-family home there comes in at $4.3 million.
It is not clear how the four properties will be utilized. A spokesperson for Ive declined to comment. Entities tied to Apercen Partners, a self-described high-net-worth tax firm in Palo Alto, previously owned the properties, according to public records.
One neighbor, who wished to remain anonymous, told The Standard the three properties at the end of Golden Gate Avenue have mostly sat empty. But one was previously rented out for $15,000 a month to disgraced tech CEO Samuel “Mouli” Cohen, who in 2012 was sentenced to 22 years in prison for wire fraud, money laundering, and tax evasion.
“It’ll be hard to throw any parties on this street without valet parking,” the neighbor said.
Other moguls, like Mark Zuckerberg, who owns 11 houses on two streets in Palo Alto, use their extra real estate for entertaining or as guest homes. To his neighbors’ chagrin, Zuckerberg’s compound is heavily surveilled, despite some homes sitting empty.
Meanwhile, Ive’s new boss, Sam Altman, has been amassing his own collection of houses in Russian Hill. In February, the OpenAI chief purchased three more properties on top of the leaky mansion he already owned.
The news of Ive’s buying spree in Belvedere coincided with a report from The Information on how his team might be designing its first physical product for OpenAI. In May, the company purchased Ive’s AI-device startup for $6.5 billion, entrusting his 50-person team with building hardware that leverages ChatGPT’s capabilities.
According to the publication’s sources, the firm has struck an agreement with two Chinese suppliers that previously worked on Apple products. One of the products OpenAI has reportedly discussed with those firms resembles a smart speaker. Other products being considered are glasses, a digital voice recorder, and a wearable pin.
Before the acquisition of Ive’s firm was announced, Altman said he had been given a prototype of the device to take home. Without offering details of what the gadget was, he said in a nine-minute hype video that it was “the coolest piece of technology that the world will have ever seen.”