Nvidia's appetite for real estate has extended to its latest deal for a new outpost in the world's artificial intelligence capital: San Francisco.
The global chipmaker signed a full-floor lease in the city's Mission Rock development, according to people with knowledge of the roughly 45,125-square-foot deal. Nvidia will take over the entire second floor of the building at 1090 Dr. Maya Angelou Lane. The building is one of several office properties developed through a partnership between development giant Tishman Speyer and the MLB's San Francisco Giants on the city's waterfront.
The chipmaker's latest lease is scheduled to commence in March, following the completion of some finish-out work to its space. It isn't yet clear how many employees will be based out of the future Mission Rock hub or whether Nvidia considers it to be a starting point for additional expansion opportunities within the nearly 300,000-square-foot building.
Spokespeople for Nvidia and Tishman, which handles leasing at Mission Rock, declined to comment to CoStar News.
Nvidia's voracious real estate expansion streak in recent years has run alongside the company's seemingly relentless growth. Earlier this year, it became the first company in history to reach a stock market value of $4 trillion, beating out rivals such as Apple and Microsoft that have previously held the title of the world's most valuable corporation.
Explosive growth across the AI sector, coupled with many companies' emphasis on in-person work, has translated into a procession of office deals that has helped reshape demand dynamics in many pandemic-battered cities.
In San Francisco alone, AI tenants are on the hunt for about 9 million square feet of office space, up from 6.5 million earlier this year, according to JLL. And AI companies have signed upward of 85 leases in San Francisco so far this year, according to data from Cushman & Wakefield. San Francisco is home to the bulk of leasing activity among AI firms.
Refuse to slow
Nvidia's office portfolio has swelled in recent years through a combination of leases and deals to purchase its own space.
Over the past year alone, it has spent more than $1 billion to scoop up properties around its Santa Clara, California, headquarters. Along with the latest San Francisco lease, it has also inked deals for new or larger office hubs in Austin, Texas; Beaverton, Oregon; and Toronto, Canada, among other cities.
Its expansion plans are unlikely to slow anytime soon. Nvidia has been scouting for space in the Washington, D.C., area as part of a broader effort to strengthen its government ties.
Leasing among tech companies 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.
The typical deal has averaged about 16,655 square feet, but the average term is just 31 months. That is much shorter than the typical office commitment and a sign that many AI startups are unclear about how quickly they'll be growing — and how much more space they'll need.