Microsoft has gone under offer to take an 80,000-square-foot headquarters, CoStar News can reveal.
The US computer giant, advised by CBRE, has decided to take all of the Here building at Thames Valley Park in Reading, the campus where it has space in other buildings.
Microsoft centralised its occupation at Thames Valley Park into Buildings 1, 2 and 3, which provide 241,000 square foot of offices in 2020. Buildings 1, 2 and 3 were bought by The Valesco Group, the European real estate investment manager, and AIP Asset Management, the Seoul headquartered asset manager, for around £100 million in 2018.
It sold Buildings 4 and 5 to Baumont Real Estate, which alongside V7 has redeveloped them as the 146,000-square-foot Here and Now campus. The Now building is also majority-leased.
Microsoft later handed back Building 3, comprising around 50,000 square feet meaning it leases close to 200,000 square foot in Buildings 1 and 2 until 2026. It will now consolidate all operations into the Here building and hand back the remaining space.
Baumont is advised by Hatch Real Estate and Knight Frank at the Here building.
It is thought the move is being worked on alongside a proposed revival of its larger London requirement.
All parties declined to comment.
The US group launched a requirement around four years ago for space in the capital, when it was expected that it would consolidate its offices in London and Reading into one campus building. It has offices in Paddington and Victoria in London. It shut down its "Experience Centre" on Regent Street earlier this year.
The search was put on hold last year after the group had confirmed in January 2023 it would be cutting staff numbers by 10,000 or 5% of the workforce.
In November 2023, the group pledged £2.5 billion of investment to build artificial intelligence infrastructure in the UK, putting developers on alert for opportunities to develop AI data centres and bring thousands of graphic processing units to the UK. In April 2024 it confirmed it would be launching an AI hub in Paddington.
In November 2024 it emerged it had recommitted to the space it occupies at British Land and GIC's 2 Kingdom Street at Paddington Central. British Land, in its results, said Microsoft had signed for 103,000 square feet.