Around the time last fall that Vercel tripled its valuation to $9 billion, the startup decided to throw a swank dinner party. It was a chance for Malte Ubl, the company’s chief technology officer, to talk shop and discuss the fast-changing landscape with a dozen so other Silicon Valley executives—and an opportunity for Vercel, a 10-year-old company that sells a platform for developing AI apps and websites, to show off.

For a venue, planners chose a place that hadn’t even opened yet: Wolfsbane, a sleek restaurant housed in a former industrial space in the Dogpatch neighborhood. The evening included cocktails, wine and a menu of razor clam ceviche, black caviar, lobster tail and dry-aged duck. In a theatrical twist, the menus were printed in backward-facing letters and could only be read when held up to a mirror.

Flush with venture capital and eager to woo clients and investors amid the AI rush, tech startups have been binging on private dining and entertainment lately, filling the Bay Area’s finest restaurants, bars and cocktail lounges most weeknights—and sometimes weekends, too. In some cases, they buy out the entire venue; other times, a room within the bar or restaurant. The boom has come to underscore the you-have-to-be-here atmosphere in San Francisco right now and how the region’s fortunes are so deeply intertwined with tech and its most recent obsession: AI.