Amazon’s Zoox Subleases 200K Square Feet in Foster City

Autonomous car startup Zoox plans to expand in the Bay Area by subleasing more than 200,000 square feet of offices near its Foster City headquarters.

The space, in a campus previously occupied by Illumina, is located at 200-800 Lincoln Centre Drive and represents one of the largest commercial real estate deals in the region this year. The expansion reflects Amazon-owned Zoox’s continued growth in the competitive autonomous ride-hailing sector, where it competes with Waymo, a unit of Google parent Alphabet.

Illumina, although no longer using the campus, remains financially responsible for it. The company recorded a $12 million charge related to the site in 2024, and the property’s value was still listed at $100 million at year end. There has been a shift in the Bay Area’s commercial real estate market, where an oversupply of life sciences space is creating new opportunities for fast-scaling tech companies such as Zoox to acquire move-in-ready facilities.

Zoox, founded at Stanford University, is recognized for its compact autonomous vehicles, which lack a traditional driver’s seat or steering wheel. Since its acquisition by Amazon for $1.3 billion in 2020, Zoox has expanded steadily under CEO Aicha Evans, recently beginning operations in Los Angeles and continuing tests in San Francisco, Seattle, Austin, Miami, Las Vegas and Foster City.

A paid service in Las Vegas is expected to launch later this year.

Robotaxi costs could fall by over 50 percent by 2030, according to a McKinsey report, making them more competitive with traditional ride-hailing services. Industry collaborations like Uber’s partnership with Waymo also point to a growing interest in the sector.

Zoox’s expansion takes advantage of current surplus office space in the market, similar to Snowflake’s sublease from Meta. As demand for biotech and tech space has fallen, startups can capitalize to fuel growth.

— Joel Russell