By Guardian staff reporter
Publication Date: 2026-02-17 13:00:00
Shortly after the terms “996” and “grindcore” entered the popular lexicon, people started telling me stories about what was happening at startups in San Francisco, ground zero of the artificial intelligence economy. There was the case of the founder, who hadn’t taken a weekend off for more than six months. The woman who joked that she gave up her social life to work at a renowned AI company. Or the employees who have started taking off their shoes in the office because if you were there at least 12 hours a day, six days a week, wouldn’t you rather wear slippers?
“If you go to a coffee shop on Sunday, everyone is working,” says Sanju Lokuhitige, the co-founder of Mythril, a pre-seed AI startup that moved to San Francisco in November to be closer to the action. Lokuhitige says he works seven days a week, 12 hours a day, aside from a few carefully chosen social events each week where he can network with other startup people…