A cybersecurity company's deal to take over roughly half of a recently completed office building in the nation's most powerful tech hub is the latest sign that big deals are back in Silicon Valley.
CrowdStrike finalized a lease for about 150,000 square feet to anchor 250 W. Washington Ave. at CityLine in Sunnyvale, California, according to people with knowledge of the agreement.
The deal is the latest 100,000-square-foot-plus lease in Silicon Valley, as the tech-concentrated market gradually rebounds back to pre-pandemic levels of demand and activity.
CrowdStrike's expansion lands just a little more than a month after Databricks, a rapidly growing artificial intelligence startup, finalized a 305,000-square-foot lease for the CityLine building next door at 200 W. Washington Ave. That July agreement — finalized shortly after Databricks committed to a significant headquarters expansion in San Francisco — fills all seven floors of the property.
Construction on the two buildings wrapped up last year as part of the broader CityLine mixed-use development. A joint venture between Silicon Valley-based developer Hunter Properties and Sares Regis Group of Northern California is spearheading the project.
Hunter Properties did not provide details on recent deals, but partner Curtis Leigh said the project's remaining office space has seen an uptick in interest among prospective tenants, many of which are prioritizing elements such as location, multiple transit routes, upscale amenities and quick access to popular shops and restaurants in their real estate searches.
"We are seeing strong activity," Leigh said in a statement. "We hope to have the building filled up soon."
Expansive growth
CrowdStrike's Silicon Valley expansion is part of a growing parade of deals in the region in which technology companies increasingly take on larger blocks of space.
Many landlords in the tech-concentrated hub are now pointing to the return of these larger deals as the clearest sign yet of Silicon Valley's market rebound after years of pandemic-driven downsizings and a record spike in sublet availabilities.
Hudson Pacific Properties, for example, reported a nearly 10% bump in tour activity across its Silicon Valley office portfolio compared to this time last year, executives of the Los Angeles-based real estate investment trust recently told analysts, hitting its highest level of activity in more than two years.
Silicon Valley's longstanding dependence on the tech industry has also made it vulnerable to remote work trends and industry headwinds in recent years. The region's vacancy rate of more than 16% is at its highest point in 20 years and is higher than the nation's vacancy rate of 14%, according to CoStar data.
The area is beginning to show signs of stabilization, though, aided by deals from big-name companies such as Nvidia, Apple, LinkedIn and Amazon.
That resurgence of tenant demand in the second quarter gave the region its highest quarterly leasing total since 2022, according to the data.
The demand wave unfurling across Silicon Valley extends elsewhere across the United States.
Leasing among tech companies nationally rose by more than 21% through the first quarter of the year compared with the same period in 2024, according to CBRE data, a spike that accounted for just shy of 8 million square feet worth of deals. That activity represented a roughly 16.5% share of total office leasing volume nationally and builds off the momentum tech companies generated last year when they accounted for about 18% of all U.S. leasing.
By comparison, leasing among tech companies represented a little more than 14% of the total national leasing volume in 2023, according to CBRE.