Navan to sublease offices from Meta in San Francisco’s SoMa

An empty 435,000-square-foot office tower leased by Meta Platforms in San Francisco’s South of Market has landed a tenant to take up less than 10 percent of its floors.

Navan, a travel tech company based in Palo Alto, subleased 36,000 square feet of offices from the Menlo Park-based parent of Facebook at 181 Fremont Street in SoMa’s Transbay District, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The 56-story building, which has luxe condominiums on the top floors, is owned by Jay Paul Company, based in the city. 

Meta leased the offices after the $500 million building was completed in 2018. Its lease ends in March 2031. It put the building up for sublease in January, months after announcing it would spend $3 billion to end global office leases to cut costs.

But the sublease, the largest in the city, came during record office vacancies in San Francisco as employees shifted to remote work.

Office vacancy in the city was a record 33.9 percent in the third quarter, according to preliminary figures from CBRE. The brokerage now says the vacancy rate last month rose to 34.7 percent, according to the Chronicle.

The deal by Navan to take up 8.3 percent of the San Francisco office tower may suggest a market turnaround as Anthropic inks a sublease at Slack’s 230,000-square-foot headquarters in South of Market and other artificial intelligence companies take up offices in the newly dubbed “AI capital of the world.”

Navan, once known as TripActions, helps customers manage travel expenses. While the firm rents offices at 44 Montgomery Street, it’s not clear if it will keep offices there and on Fremont Street.

— Dana Bartholomew

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