Lambda is expanding its offices near other artificial intelligence firms in San Francisco.
The San Jose-based AI computing startup has subleased 20,000 square feet of offices at 45 Fremont Street, in the Financial District, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
Terms of the deal with the unidentified lessor for a full floor at the 34-story tower between Market and Mission streets were not disclosed. Lambda is already planning another expansion.
“All of our hiring is happening in San Francisco,” Robert Brooks, a founding team member and vice president of revenue at Lambda, told the newspaper. “We intend to fill out that office and take on another floor at the end of 2025.”
The new office grows Lambda’s real estate footprint by 50 percent. The firm’s 40,000-square-foot headquarters in San Jose is full, and mostly used for manufacturing, he said.
Lambda, which sells cloud computing services and computers for training artificial intelligence software, is the latest firm to beef up its presence in the self-professed “AI Capital of the World” — a bright spot in San Francisco’s otherwise dismal office market, with vacancy at more than 37 percent.
This fall, OpenAI expanded its local office footprint to nearly 1 million square feet with a 315,000-square-foot sublease at 550 Terry Francois Boulevard in Mission Bay, a year after the creator of ChatGPT subleased 486,600 square feet at 1455 and 1515 Third Street.
Last month, Notion, another AI-powered startup, inked a deal for a 105,000-square-foot office headquarters at 685 Market Street, in the Financial District.
Lambda, launched in 2012 out of a San Francisco apartment and then moved to San Jose, wanted to be closer to the action.
Before opening its hub in San Jose two years ago, Lambda had offices in the Dogpatch near Mission Bay.
Brooks said the company wanted to be in Downtown to facilitate commuting. And many “AI events” are now taking place in the heart of the city, he said.
“We’re right next to the AWS [Amazon Web Services] GenAI Loft [at 525 Market Street], and there are tons of events that happen within the Marina that we’re extremely close to. We’re also right next to the BART station” at the Embarcadero, Brooks told the Chronicle.
Read more
Commercial
San Francisco
OpenAI subleases 350K sf building in San Francisco’s Mission Bay
Commercial
San Francisco
Can San Francisco’s office woes turn the corner in 2025?
Commercial
San Francisco
Tech office leasing on track to tick up in San Francisco
Lambda, now valued at $1.5 billion, requires employees to show up at the office four days a week. But not for long.
“As we march towards an IPO, it’s all hands on deck,” Brooks told the Chronicle. “You only get to ring the bell on NASDAQ when you are with each other in a physical space making decisions, rather than waiting to get on a Zoom call.”
— Dana Bartholomew