SAN FRANCISCO (KRON) — San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie said no deal was struck and no concessions were made with President Donald Trump when the president canceled a “surge” of federal immigration agents to the city at the 11th hour last week. Speaking at the Tech Crunch Disrupt 2025 conference on Wednesday, Lurie was asked about the incident, in which Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff initially supported sending the National Guard to San Francisco.
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With over 100 federal immigration and border patrol agents amassed across the Bay at Coast Guard Island in Alameda, the president eventually called off the operation, he said, after receiving phone calls from Benioff and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is also rumored to have placed a call to Trump.
Photo: Alex Baker/KRON4
The president also revealed he had placed a phone call to Mayor Lurie, who recounted what he’d said to Trump.
“What I said to him was what I say to everybody, that this is a city on the rise. I mean three days of Disrupt here in San Francisco should prove what we’ve been saying for the past nine months is,” Lurie said when asked about the call. “My number one focus is public safety. Every single day we’re saying how can we make people here in San Francisco safer?”
“What I said was, it’s working. Crime is down 30% in San Francisco. It’s down 40% right around Moscone Center and Union Square because we added more officers on the beat,” Lurie added.
‘No deal’ with Trump, Lurie says
Moderator Connie Loizos, Editor-in-Chief at TechCrunch, then asked the mayor that given the president’s proclivity for dealmaking, if he’d struck any kind of bargain with Trump.
“No, absolutely not. No ask,” Lurie responded. “He said in his post that he disagreed with calling off but he was going to give us an opportunity, and we’re going to able to prove that we can take care of ourselves with local law enforcement and state and federal partnerships.”
Crime down in SF, mayor says
Lurie emphasized the city’s 30% drop in crime and reiterated that his number one priority is safety, while admitting there was work to do.
“Are we where we want to be? No. We have work to do to disrupt fentanyl dealers in our city, drug dealers in our city,” he continued.
“This is the innovation capitol of the world,” Lurie said. “We’re on the right track.”
AI companies should invest in city, mayor says
With San Francisco at the heart of the artificial intelligence boom, Lurie also addressed the question of economic vs. social progress in the city. The mayor put the impetus on some of the biggest names in the AI industry, companies with multi-billion dollar valuations like OpenAI, Anthropic, Databricks, and ScaleAI.
“They have an obligation, they have a responsibility to be part of the community, that’ what I say to them. It’s an open invitation to San Francisco, but if you’re here, I want you investing in our public schools, I want you investing in our arts and culture. I want you investing in public transit. We have a massive fiscal cliff when it comes to public transit in San Francisco and in the Bay Area next year, and I want these companies involved.”
“That is going to be my ask of them,” he added. “They get a lot from being in San Francisco. We get a lot from them being here but I want them investing.”
AI’s impact on San Francisco housing
Mayor Lurie was also asked about the city’s housing crisis, which has been exacerbated by AI companies driving up rent an estimated 11% — the fastest growing rate in the country for a big city.
“We have to build more housing in San Francisco, we have to build more housing statewide, and frankly, we have to build more housing country-wide,” Lurie said. “We have an affordability crisis in San Francisco, there is no question about that.”
In terms of solutions, the mayor mentioned his Family Zoning Plan, which aims to expand housing affordability and availability by allowing for increased density, particularly along residential and commercial corridors.
“We’re hoping to pass it with the board of supervisors in the next couple of months,” Lurie said, adding, “It doesn’t mean housing will get built the next day.”
Waymos and San Francisco’s history as innovation center
Mayor Lurie also spoke about the proliferation of autonomous Waymos in the city. The company’s bulky, white driverless Jaguar SUVs have exploded on the city’s streets, drawing mixed reactions from residents while becoming a major curiosity for tourists.
“I think we should be the test bed for emerging technology, and AI, and healthcare tech,” Lurie said. “We always have been and under my leadership, we will continue to lead and lean in. I’m proud of the success that has Waymo had.”
“We have tourists coming in from all over the world wanting to ride a Waymo in San Francisco,” he added.
‘The future starts in San Francisco’
Speaking on the final day of the 3-day tech conference, Lurie ended on a positive note regarding San Francisco’s place in the tech world.
“We believe in the future and the future always starts in San Francisco, and we’re going to lean into it,” he said.
“We can’t ever go back to what we’ve seen over the last five years. We want entrepreneurs, innovators, business leaders, and all of you to be engaged and involved in not only our comeback, but our rise,” he said, adding, “One more time: Let’s go San Francisco. We got this.”
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