Anthropic Leases More Office Space in San Francisco

Anthropic still hasn’t satiated its appetite for office space in downtown San Francisco after gobbling up hundreds of thousands of square feet over the past year.

Most recently, the artificial intelligence giant signed a lease for roughly 100,000 square feet at 400 Howard Street, the San Francisco Business Times reported, citing multiple sources with knowledge of the deal. The lease spans three floors at the 370,000-square-foot building known as Foundry Square I – one of four buildings in the Foundry Square complex.

The State Teachers Retirement System of Ohio acquired 400 Howard Street in 2012. At one point, BlackRock leased the entire building, though it downsized there to roughly 240,000 square feet in 2023, the Business Times reported.

Anthropic’s lease at 400 Howard comes on the heels of another lease it signed earlier this year a block away at 300 Howard Street. That deal comprises the entire 420,000-square-foot, 25-story office tower. Anthropic will move its headquarters into the building at 300 Howard in phases next year. In the meantime, Anthropic will begin setting up employees at 400 Howard in two phases this summer.

At the top of this year, the company had more than 1,300 employees in the Bay Area, representing more than half of its 2,500-person headcount, according to the Business Times. The AI firm has been growing at breakneck speed and finding more office space to accommodate new workers; in February, the company’s total value was placed at $380 billion, more than double its $183 billion valuation in September. Anthropic, along with competitor and fellow Financial District office giant OpenAI, is reportedly looking to go public by the end of this year.

A small stretch of Howard Street has become increasingly dominated by Anthropic in recent years. In 2023, it subleased roughly 240,000 square feet from Slack at 500 Howard Street. Across the street at 505 Howard, Anthropic leased an additional 100,000 square feet last year.

Its leases at 400 and 300 Howard were signed in preparation for its expiring deals at 500 and 505 Howard, which are both also part of the Foundry Square complex. Its sublease in Slack’s space expires when Slack’s master lease is up in 2028. The 505 Howard lease also expires that year, per the Business Times.

San Francisco and the Bay Area are expected to see an influx of more than 50,000 workers in the AI sector by 2030, according to CBRE. AI firms’ office footprint is predicted to quadruple from 5 million square feet to 21 million.

— Chris Malone Méndez