Marc Benioff recently said his tech company was able to cut thousands of jobs due to artificial intelligence, but rising demand in the sector is also leading the Salesforce CEO to add space at its Manhattan home.
The San Francisco-based company agreed to expand its footprint by 71,000 square feet at 3 Bryant Park, otherwise known as Salesforce Tower, CoStar reported. The dual expansion and renewal means Salesforce leases a 311,000-square-foot chunk of the 1.2-million-square-foot Ivanhoé Cambridge property at 1095 Sixth Avenue.
In a statement, an executive for the tech company said its “vision for real estate is to create the right spaces and experiences that accelerate growth and empower humans, agents and robots to work alongside one another.”
Financial details of the lease were not disclosed, but Salesforce’s lease is locked in through May 2029. The additional space will include an employee training center, collaboration and hybrid-work areas, and space for a customer-focused initiative.
Salesforce’s footprint has been boomeranging back and forth in recent years as the office landscape has changed. Last year, the company said it leased 900,000 square feet in its home city of San Francisco, a 45 percent reduction from the 1.6 million square feet it said it had in the city as of early 2023.
Artificial intelligence is counterintuitively bringing tech companies back to their physical spaces, though. Tech companies’ leasing rose 21 percent year-over-year in the first quarter, according to CBRE, accounting for about a sixth of total office leasing volume in the country.
This year, Ivanhoé Cambridge landed a $1.13 billion refi for its trophy office tower, receiving a CMBS loan from Wells Fargo, Bank of America and Bank of Montreal. It paid $2.2 billion in 2015 to buy the Bryant Park tower, the second most-expensive office purchase in U.S. history at the time.
The property was 97 percent leased at the time of the refinancing.
— Holden Walter-Warner
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