Fortinet Buys More Sunnyvale Offices in $15 Million Deal

Fortinet’s real estate buying spree in its hometown of Sunnyvale continues with two more buildings in the Silicon Valley city.

The cybersecurity company bought two buildings at 140 and 144 Commercial Street for $15 million, the San Francisco Business Times reported, citing documents filed with the Santa Clara County Clerk-Recorder’s Office. One structure is roughly 12,000 square feet and was built in 1957, while the other totals about 14,000 square feet and was built in 1975.

Fortinet has been snapping up properties across Silicon Valley in recent years, especially in Sunnyvale. Its headquarters campus at 909 Kifer Road now totals more than 170,000 square feet. The latest additions to its portfolio at 140 and 144 Commercial Street are located across the street.

Earlier this year, the company bought seven Sunnyvale properties around its Kifer Road campus totaling about 77,000 square feet for $47 million. Last year, it picked up two 30,000-square-foot buildings on nearby Kifer Place for $10 million. The year before, it acquired a Santa Clara tech campus for $192 million.

The latest transaction comes as the company is seeing a 20 percent growth in revenue from last year, according to earnings data cited by the Business Times.

Sunnyvale has served as a bright spot in the broader Bay Area office market in recent years. Over the past year, fellow tech company Apple has emerged as one of the busiest buyers in the South Bay city. Last summer, the Cupertino-based iPhone maker spent about $1.1 billion on several office buildings in the region, all of them concentrated in Sunnyvale or its hometown of Cupertino. Apple extended its shopping spree into this summer with the acquisition of 684 West Maude Avenue in Sunnyvale earlier this month for $162 million.

The Silicon Valley office market is expected to keep seeing increased demand as the artificial intelligence boom exerts pressure on local housing and office markets. Office vacancy in the region fell to 14.4 percent in the first quarter and is expected to continue falling, according to a first quarter report from Colliers.

— Chris Malone Méndez