Anthropic Signs Another San Francisco Office Lease

Anthropic’s Howard Street hot streak continues with its third lease in less than two weeks.

The artificial intelligence giant just inked a short-term lease for roughly 70,000 square feet at 405 Howard Street, the San Francisco Business Times reported. With this deal, Anthropic now has a presence in each of the four buildings of the Foundry Square office complex, which occupies all four corners of the intersection of Howard and First Streets in downtown San Francisco.

The lease at 405 Howard will add about 350 desks to the company’s inventory as it prepares its phased move-in to its new headquarters at 300 Howard Street next year. The company does not yet occupy all of its leased space, and some of the offices such as 405 Howard are meant to fill a gap until it consolidates headquarters operations at 300 Howard.

The 10-story 405 Howard building is also known as the Orrick Building, named for a law firm that is one of the structure’s largest tenants. In 2018, consulting giant PwC leased 200,000 square feet at the roughly 520,000-square-foot building.

Anthropic now leases roughly 1 million square feet in the neighborhood, according to the Business Times. That marks a notable milestone that competitor and fellow downtown San Francisco occupant OpenAI recently passed.

The recent leasing spree by the Dario Amodei-led firm started earlier this year with a lease for the entire 420,000-square-foot building at 300 Howard Street and the adjacent 342 Howard Street, totaling about 480,000 square feet.

Last month, Anthropic signed a deal for about 100,000 square feet across three floors at 400 Howard Street, known as Foundry Square I; as with its later move into 300 Howard, it plans to move employees there in phases. The company also converted its sublease for the 240,000-square-foot 500 Howard Street building, known as Foundry Square IV, into a long-term lease in recent weeks. — Chris Malone Méndez