OpenAI Grabs More Bay Area Space in Richmond

Another week, another Bay Area lease for OpenAI.

The ChatGPT creator signed a deal for a 202,400-square-foot industrial facility at 1411 Harbour Way South in Richmond, the Mercury News reported, citing documents filed in Contra Costa County. The property is across the street from the Ford Point complex, a historic former assembly plant for the car brand.

The 25.9-acre property could be used for industrial, logistics, warehouse and distribution purposes with hundreds of employees on site, the outlet said.

OpenAI’s Richmond lease adds to a string of deals for workspace from the Sam Altman-led tech giant in recent months. Earlier this week, news broke that OpenAI leased 439,000 square feet of offices across five buildings in Mountain View. That space could accommodate between 1,800 and 2,200 workers.

Also this month, OpenAI completed a sublease deal for roughly 280,000 square feet at the former Dropbox headquarters complex in San Francisco’s Mission Bay neighborhood. With that deal, OpenAI’s office presence in the city increased to more than 1 million square feet, all of which is concentrated in Mission Bay. The company subleased two buildings from Uber at 1455 and 1515 Third Street in 2023 and signed another sublease with Gap for a 315,000-square-foot six-story office building at 550 Terry Francois Boulevard.

OpenAI isn’t just in growth mode in the Bay Area.

Last month, the artificial intelligence giant inked a deal to more than quadruple its office space in the Seattle area. The company finalized a deal to expand its offices at City Center Plaza in downtown Bellevue by approximately 223,130 square feet, up from its deal for 69,000 square feet across two floors at the tower signed last year. Seattle’s Eastside, much like the Bay Area, is a hotspot for tech companies in the Puget Sound region.

— Chris Malone Méndez