In what is being heralded as the Bay Area's largest office lease of the year, Snowflake Inc., the data warehousing company that stirred the pot when it ditched a California HQ for a 'headquarter-less' model, is now expanding its physical footprint right back in Menlo Park, the heart of tech innovation. The company confirmed to The SF Standard that it had inked a deal for a whopping 773,000 square-foot campus as a sublease from Meta, the ever-presence behind Facebook.
Despite Snowflake claiming no headquarters, it seems the draw of Silicon Valley's rich talent pool and its nexus of tech activity is too potent to resist, with the company's vice president of workplace and real estate, Warrick Taylor, remarking on the region’s longstanding "environment that celebrates innovation and creativity that drives our society forward" in a statement reported by the San Francisco Chronicle. This move marks a major commitment Snowflake is making to remain rooted in the area, symbolized by the new campus, which will include a gym, business training facility, and indoor and outdoor cafe seating to accommodate their growth.
It's no secret that office real estate has been erratic since the pandemic, with many firms slashing their on-site presence. Yet, here, Snowflake gallops against the grain, snagging nearly 1 million square feet of office space across its locations this year. As part of the Menlo Gateway project, owned by Bohannon Companies, Snowflake's new Menlo Park residence will be situated at 125-135 Constitution Drive and 100-150 Independence Drive, a locale designed not only to house the current workforce but to foster future expansion as well, this information coming through despite Meta's decision to keep mum on the topic.
The lease secures Snowflake's position as one of the Bay Area's top ducks in the office leasing pond at a time when others are paddling away to a more digitally dispersed lily pad. This reality is underscored by their revenue splash of $942 million in the last quarter, as disclosed in the San Francisco Chronicle, an uptick that nudged their stocks by a robust 32.8%.
