Nvidia Prepares to Set Up Shop in San Francisco

The world’s most valuable company is the latest tenant to plant a flag at Mission Rock.

The forthcoming mixed-use development from Tishman Speyer and the San Francisco Giants will reportedly welcome Nvidia as an office tenant, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. The country’s top chipmaker is “close” to signing a lease for 45,000 square feet in the eight-story office building, according to the Chronicle.

Visa leased the first of Mission Rock’s two office buildings in 2019 before the 13-story building was even built. In May, Coinbase leased space at the second office building, which also boasts the Golden State Warriors as a tenant.

Nvidia has been gobbling up more office space in recent months throughout the Bay Area. In May, the tech giant spent $123 million for a 10-building office campus across the street from its headquarters in Santa Clara. In January, the company bought a 500,000-square-foot, four-building office complex also in Santa Clara.

The company was reportedly looking for a 30,000-square-foot sales office in San Francisco in May, according to the Chronicle. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang is bullish on the city; he already owns a Pacific Heights mansion and said in May that the city is “thriving again… all because of AI.”

In the next five years, AI is expected to revitalize San Francisco’s office market, which notched a 34.8 percent office vacancy rate last quarter, per Cushman & Wakefield.

AI companies could grow from the current San Francisco footprint of 5 million square feet to 21 million square feet by 2030, according to a CBRE report. The accompanying surge in hiring is predicted to bring between 50,000 and 60,000 new jobs to the city. OpenAI, for example, has already nabbed about 1 million square feet across the city.

The Mission Rock mixed-use development across Mission Bay from Oracle Park is attracting commercial tenants and will feature a combination of retail, offices and housing upon completion. The Mission Bay neighborhood itself is well positioned amid San Francisco’s sagging office market with an office vacancy rate of 12.2 percent, Robert Sammons, senior director for tech research at Cushman & Wakefield, told the Chronicle. That makes it the neighborhood with the second-lowest vacancy rate in the city after the Presidio.

— Chris Malone Méndez