Even buying a $27 million home in a tony SF neighborhood will not keep the coyotes off your property, as artificial intelligence mogul Sam Altman admits in an interview with Time magazine that he’s got a coyote that refuses to leave his San Francisco yard.

We brought you the story last month of a very chill San Francisco coyote lounging around on someone’s patio furniture. And we bring this up today because another such image was just published in Time magazine. The Time magazine photo of a coyote lounging on San Francisco patio furniture was taken by the partner of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, and apparently Altman’s $27 million Russian Hill has a pesky coyote problem.  

We learn this in Time’s CEO of the Year interview with Altman, wherein Time reports that “an urban coyote that has colonized the grounds of his $27 million home in San Francisco.” This revelation comes about two-thirds of the way deep in a nearly 7,000-word profile of Altman.

“This coyote moved into my house and scratches on the door outside,” Altman told Time magazine. “It’s very cute, but it’s very annoying at night.”


Business Insider picks up the coyote story, and adds additional detail of their previous reporting on Altman’s Russian Hill house. Altman reportedly paid $27 million for the place in March of 2020. According to Business Insider, the house has “sweeping views over San Francisco, (and) includes a main residence, a wellness center, a cantilevered infinity pool, and an underground garage with a car turntable.”

It may feel like the SF coyote population has grown in recent years, but this is an incorrect perception. It’s just that the coyotes got more comfortable wandering into human habitats when the streets emptied out at the onset of the pandemic. The Chronicle reported in November that there are about 100 coyotes in San Francisco, and that population size “has remained consistent for 10 to 15 years.”

But I don’t care if you’re billionaire Sam Altman or who you are, please do not feed the coyotes.

Related: We've Got Seven Baby Coyotes in Golden Gate Park [SFist]

Images: (Left) TechCrunch via Wikimedia Commons, (Right) @ANoffsinger via Twitter