Tech office leasing in New York, after closing its best post-pandemic year in 2024, has hit another milestone: Year-to-date deals in Manhattan have reached their highest level since 2000.
Tech leasing in Manhattan through April reached 1.67 million square feet, the “best start to a year since 2000,” according to a study by commercial real estate services firm CBRE. The volume included first-quarter leasing of 1.2 million square feet, which CBRE said “capped off the strongest back-to-back quarterly performance” since the first quarter of 2000.
The performance in New York came on the heels of the industry finishing 2024 with its annual total of 3.16 million square feet, the highest since 2019, when the sector's annual leasing hit a record high of nearly 7 million square feet, the CBRE study found.
The industry’s “recent revitalization” has been driven by a combination of factors besides the rise of artificial intelligence and growth of firms using AI, CBRE said, adding that “industry stalwarts” have come “off the sidelines to transact again” while mid- and early-stage firms also are “resuming growth.”
“Reminiscent of tech from 2015 to 2019, firms are relocating for more space, expanding or renewing long-term at their current location, adding new locations, establishing their first NYC location, or purchasing buildings outright,” CBRE said, adding that Amazon over the past several months “has been a catalyst for tech activity within Manhattan.”
Amazon has been fast expanding its office footprint in New York and other markets after acknowledging it didn’t have enough space to accommodate all of the employees it had called back to their workspaces five days a week. For instance, the tech giant made its first New York office purchase since 2020 at 522 Fifth Ave. and signed one of Manhattan’s largest office leases this year at the former HSBC U.S. headquarters building at 10 Bryant Park.
Stricter in-office requirements have led to increased leasing activity by other tech companies, landlords have said.
Firms including IBM and Intuit have expanded their Manhattan office footprint this year at One Madison and 51 Astor Place, respectively. SoftBank-backed market data firm AlphaSense, which uses AI to help clients make investment decisions, inked a new lease spanning about 50,000 square feet in a planned relocation to the Hudson Yards neighborhood.
“While the reemergence of ‘traditional’ tech firms has spearheaded the sector’s recovery, the rapid rise of AI — both as a technology in and of itself and its application within products and services — has served to supplement this momentum,” CBRE said. AI’s share of the Manhattan tech sector’s office leasing has risen to 19% from 2023 to year-to-date 2025, more than double the 8% from 2020 to 2022, CBRE said.
ChatGPT developer OpenAI last year signed a 90,000-square-foot lease at 295 Lafayette St. in its first East Coast location, for instance.
The tech sector rebound isn’t limited to New York. A separate CBRE study found that the industry represented 29 of the 100 largest U.S. office leases last year, up from 11 in 2023 and ahead of the finance and insurance sectors.