5G radio startup expanding HQ with move to Sunnyvale

Eridan is waving goodbye to Mountain View.

The 5G radio startup will expand its office footprint fivefold and relocate its headquarters to neighboring Sunnyvale after raising $46 million in two funding rounds.

The company is sending its 32 Bay Area employees to a 35,000-square-foot, two-story office building at 400 West California Avenue, Eridan’s Amy Lamboley said. The structure is part of Principal Real Estate Investors’ 10-building Sunnyvale Business Park. Eridan’s lease for its 7,000-square-foot office suite two miles west, at 110 Pioneer Way in Mountain View, is set to expire. It also has another office in Zagreb, Croatia’s capital.

Newmark’s John Yandle and Gabe Regalado represented Eridan in the lease, which the startup signed in June. Its new headquarters is planned to open next month, Lamboley said. She declined to comment on the deal’s financial terms.

Colliers’ Dave Sandlin, who represented Principal in the deal with colleague Susan Gregory, said the rental rate on the West California Avenue building is “very close” to its $4.95 per square foot a month ask.

Eridan’s new landlord also provided a tenant improvement allowance, Sandlin said, declining to provide the exact figure. It will also receive a few rent-free months as it transitions headquarters, according to a broker with credible knowledge but no involvement in the deal.

The lease underlines Sunnyvale’s attractiveness to small companies looking to expand in Silicon Valley without paying top-of-the-market rents in Palo Alto and Mountain View. In addition to being more affordable, Sunnyvale also boasts a lower vacancy rate of 4.1 percent, according to recent Colliers data.

Sandlin suggested that comparable space and pricing are playing a key role in elevating Sunnyvale’s demand.

“We’ve had really good chances of renewing because of that,” he said. “When tenants go to renew, and look at Palo Alto and Mountain View, they’re going to pay substantially higher rents.”

There’s good indication that Sunnyvale will get hotter. More than 4 million square feet of office space was under construction in the city last quarter, which is the most out of 10 Silicon Valley submarkets, according to Colliers data.

Like the city it will soon call home, Eridan is also expanding. It plans to double its Bay Area headcount over the next 12 months, Lamboley said.

The startup is building a 5G-compatible transceiver, a combination of a radio transmitter and a receiver, that’s designed to transfer more data in the same bandwidth, making 5G communication more efficient while also expanding its reach. The device would be installed on cell towers equipped with a modem and an antenna, converting digital data to the radio frequency signals sent out by the antenna. Eridan expects to bring the product to market at the end of next year with plans to ramp up production in 2024, Lamboley said.

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