Databricks Adds More Sunnyvale Offices

Six months after first landing in Sunnyvale, artificial intelligence-powered software company Databricks is growing its footprint in the Silicon Valley city.

Last month, San Francisco-based Databricks leased three floors at the seven-story 250 West Washington Avenue building in Sunnyvale, adding to its office space at the Cityline development, the San Francisco Business Times reported. The company now occupies more than 455,000 square feet across the two newest Cityline office towers. Average floor plate size in the building is about 47,500 square feet, per CBRE.

Last summer, the venture capital-funded firm leased the entire seven-story building next door at 200 West Washington Avenue, securing 305,000 square feet there. It was the company’s first outpost in Sunnyvale and its third in the Bay Area.

Databricks’ Cityline office expansion is the latest instance of an AI firm doubling down on in-person work as the booming AI sector takes up more office space across the Bay Area and workers move into the region in droves. AI companies currently occupy at least 6 million square feet of offices across Silicon Valley alone, according to the Business Times. Databricks’ expansion at Cityline was among the largest leases of the fourth quarter.

Last quarter, Silicon Valley recorded 2.9 million square feet of positive net absorption, meaning more space was leased than vacated, per CBRE data cited by the Business Times. Office vacancy dropped for a fifth consecutive quarter to 16.1 percent. Technology and AI were the biggest drivers of major office leasing, comprising approximately 85 percent of leases.

OpenAI and Anthropic have been pursuing a similar strategy of office expansion in a concentrated cluster near their San Francisco headquarters. OpenAI is reportedly in talks to lease between 200,000 to 250,000 square feet in San Francisco’s Mission Bay, which would bring its local office footprint to more than 1 million square feet. In September, Anthropic signed a lease for approximately 100,000 square feet of offices across the street from its headquarters in downtown San Francisco.— Chris Malone Méndez