TikTok owner eyes big San Jose office deal in potential tech expansion
The owner of the TikTok video service is eyeing a big office deal in San Jose.
SAN JOSE — The owner of the TikTok video service is eyeing a big office deal in San Jose that could enable the tech company to accomplish a significant expansion of its real estate footprint in Silicon Valley.
ByteDance is discussing a sublease of a large office building on Coleman Avenue in San Jose, according to several commercial property sources who are familiar with the status of the potential rental transaction.
The office building is located in Coleman Highline, an office, hotel and housing complex located across the street from San Jose International Airport, the sources said. The sources did not wish to be named because, while they have close knowledge of the possible transaction, they are not officially authorized to discuss the leasing talks.
China-based ByteDance already occupies a big office complex in Coleman Highline after the company subleased 658,000 square feet of new office space that encompasses the entirety of two buildings with addresses of 1193 and 1199 Coleman Avenue.
That rental agreement occurred in 2022 and ByteDance had begun to occupy the space by early 2023. ByteDance is the owner of an increasingly popular short-form video hosting service called TikTok.
In September 2023, Roku, which rents several buildings in Coleman Highline, revealed in a regulatory filing that it had decided to slash its office footprint at the tech campus and would attempt to sublease two of the buildings it occupies.
Roku has put up for sublease buildings at 1155 Coleman Avenue, which is the current Roku headquarters building, and at 1143 Coleman Avenue, according to a brochure being circulated by Colliers, a commercial real estate firm that is seeking tenants for the buildings that are being made available.
The 1155 Coleman office building totals 194,500 square feet while the 1143 Coleman building totals 162,600 square feet, the Colliers brochure states.
ByteDance is in discussions to sublease at least one of the buildings, according to the sources. It wasn’t immediately clear which of the buildings was involved in the negotiations.
The 658,000 square feet that ByteDance already occupies is potentially enough office space to accommodate 2,600 to 3,900 workers, based on typical space ratios for employees in modern office sites.
The office buildings that Roku is offering for sublease could potentially accommodate 600 to 900 workers.
Tech companies starting in 2023 began to drastically slash their office footprints as a result of shifting work trends in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak.
The onset of the virus triggered more remote work, a trend that caused demand to boom for tech devices and tech services.
The shift to working from home or remotely has reduced the appetite for office space on the part of the tech industry. Tech companies also re-prioritized their focus to new industries such as artificial intelligence, which prompted a surge of industry layoffs that began more than two years ago.
Over two-plus years that started in early 2022, tech companies have chopped more than 32,800 jobs in the Bay Area, according to official filings with state labor officials.