🚨 🏢 AI COMPANIES FLOOD MANHATTAN OFFICE MARKET — 56% OF TECH LEASING NOW AI, ECHOING YEAR 2000 BUBBLE Cushman & Wakefield reports AI firms leased 1.03 million square feet in Q1 2026 alone, already surpassing all of 2025. AI now represents 55.9% of Manhattan tech-sector leasing, up from 20.9% in full-year 2024. Q1 2026 posted strongest quarterly leasing volume in six years at 10.4 million square feet, with vacancy collapsing 2.2 percentage points. An AI company paid record $320 per square foot at One Vanderbilt. The flight to trophy Class A buildings is extreme. SL Green hit 100% occupancy on trophy assets. AI tenants are non-profitable startups burning venture capital, hunting premium space for optics. The parallel to late-1990s dot-com overheating is structural. Manhattan office REITs gain short-term. Higher NOI locks in. SL Green projects record pipeline. But when AI burn rates hit zero funding, vacancy cascades back into the best buildings first — the same ones commanding peak rents today.