Orbital, an artificial intelligence platform built for real estate legal work, has signed an 11,185-square-foot lease that hands it the entire sixth floor of 40 West 25th Street in Manhattan's Flatiron District, establishing the address as the company's new U.S. headquarters. The deal moves Orbital out of a temporary shared office and into a permanent home in one of the city's hottest pockets for AI-driven office leasing.
The move is a short one geographically but a significant one for the company. Orbital is relocating from a temporary shared office at 18 West 18th Street to the 12-story building a few blocks north, according to Commercial Observer. The company also maintains offices in London and Los Angeles, but this Flatiron space becomes its flagship East Coast base, a need CEO and co-founder Will Pearce has pointed to directly, per Connect CRE. JLL arranged Orbital's office lease, and the company says it will use the base to build together, collaborate with customers and partners, and deepen its U.S. real estate presence, according to the same Connect CRE report.
A Landlord Building an AI Cluster
The Flatiron building at the center of the deal has a clear owner with a long-term stake in the asset. Kaufman Investments, the investment division of the Kaufman Organization, acquired the landmarked property in 2020 for $48.5 million, Commercial Observer reports. Kaufman Leasing Company represented the landlord in the Orbital transaction, with Michael Kaufman and Grant Greenspan representing Kaufman Investments, while Evan Margolin and Valentin Stobetsky represented Orbital, per Connect CRE.
Orbital isn't the only artificial intelligence tenant the landlord has landed recently. A report describes approximately 10,500 square feet at 48 West 25th Street, with asking rent in the $80s, alongside existing building tenant Hearts of Gold, a vintage clothing retailer. That back-to-back leasing activity suggests the building itself is emerging as a small hub for AI tenants within the neighborhood's broader boom.
Funding Fueled the Expansion
The lease follows closely on the heels of a major capital raise. In January 2026, Orbital announced a $60 million Series B funding round led by growth fund Brighton Park Capital, bringing its total funding to $75 million, with participation from REV — the venture capital arm of LexisNexis parent RELX — along with The LegalTech Fund, Moderne Ventures, Grosvenor Group, and JLL Spark, according to Commercial Observer's January reporting. JLL Spark, JLL's corporate venture arm, was an early investor in Orbital, and the company says it plans to use the new capital to accelerate adoption across the real estate transaction ecosystem and accelerate its U.S. expansion, per Connect CRE. The round reportedly gave Orbital the capital it needed to double headcount and scale U.S. operations, according to Commercial Observer.
Orbital's origin story ties back to its founders' earlier careers. The company was founded in 2018 by Will Pearce and Edmond Boulle, who both originally worked in the space industry before applying spatial analysis and artificial intelligence to commercial real estate legal processes, according to Artificial Lawyer. That background, the outlet notes, is what led the company toward tools for analyzing complex property boundaries and historical land records rather than general-purpose legal software.
Scale and an Industry-First Safeguard
Orbital's platform has grown fast on the business side. It supported over 200,000 U.S. and U.K. property transactions in 2025 and expanded to over 250,000 annual transactions by late 2026, serving clients that include Am Law 100 firms, Magic Circle law firms, developers, and real estate investment trusts, Artificial Lawyer reports. In 2025, the company also became the first legal technology firm to launch a dedicated product-specific insurance policy covering its AI outputs, offering financial indemnification to legal clients against accuracy errors in automated due diligence, according to the same outlet.
That kind of built-in risk mitigation matters in a legal industry currently grappling with AI's rougher edges elsewhere. Academic research from the University of Southern California released in 2026 found that AI-generated text in court complaints surged from near 0% to approximately 18% in early 2026, according to a report cited by MIT Technology Review. A report also noted a 158% increase in pro se docket entries generally. Orbital's transactional, real estate-specific approach stands apart from that broader wave of general litigation AI tools.
Part of a Bigger Midtown South Surge
Orbital's new lease lands amid a wider commercial real estate wave tied to artificial intelligence companies. Technology companies leased 4.15 million square feet of Manhattan office space during the first half of 2026, with AI companies accounting for 1.50 million square feet across 63 deals. Midtown South captured 75.1% of technology leasing, according to New York Offices. Asking rents for office space in Midtown South averaged $85.73 per square foot during the second quarter of 2026, per CBRE data cited by Commercial Observer, providing a price backdrop for the surging submarket.
