A 490,000-square-foot tech campus in North San Jose has changed hands for $264.9 million, a price that real estate brokers say ranks among the largest sales of an advanced manufacturing or R&D property in Bay Area history. Los Angeles-based Preylock Holdings closed on the Assembly at North First campus on Tuesday, buying the six-building property from seller Exeter Real Estate Group at a price that exceeds the campus's latest assessed value by 9.3 percent.
The purchase price works out to well above the $242.3 million assessed value recorded as of January 2026, according to The Mercury News. Exeter had paid $192 million for the property back in 2021, and when the firm brought the campus to market in January, brokers issued pricing guidance of roughly $285 million, or about $582 per square foot, according to The Registry Northern California Real Estate. The final sale landed below that initial ask but still comfortably above the county's valuation, a sign of how much appetite exists for campuses built around heavy-power infrastructure rather than conventional office space.
Newmark executive David Sandlin said the campus attracted a top-tier investor because of its tenant roster, telling the Mercury News that Assembly at North First has “a strong tenant base of artificial intelligence, advanced manufacturing and robotics companies.” The property, located near the corner of North First Street and Headquarters Drive with addresses spanning 3940, 3950, 3930 and 4000 North First Street and 90 Headquarters Drive, is currently 100 percent leased, according to sources familiar with the property cited by the same report.
From Chip Plant to Robotics Row
The site's transformation traces back decades. The former Lam Research campus spans 27 acres, and its buildings were constructed in the 1980s and 1990s. A joint venture of SKS Partners, ProspectHill Group and Invesco Real Estate undertook its redevelopment, with Gensler as project architect, per Bisnow.
The tenant lineup includes Figure AI, AI startup Hark, and Teradyne subsidiary LitePoint, with leasing handled by Newmark executives Joe Kelly, Mike Saign, Shawn Kellenberger and Eric Bluestein.
Figure AI's Rapid Expansion
Figure AI, which makes robots enhanced by artificial intelligence, has been expanding at the campus since its initial rental agreement and is now headquartered in the Figure AI office building at 3960 North First Street. The company relocated there in early 2025, leasing 98,700 square feet and nearly quadrupling its prior 27,900-square-foot Sunnyvale footprint, according to the Real Deal's reporting on the lease.
Preylock Holdings is no stranger to betting on Silicon Valley's hardware boom. The firm previously owned Nvidia's headquarters campus in Santa Clara before selling it directly to Nvidia for $374 million in May 2024, per the SF Standard. Preylock financed the Assembly purchase with $172.2 million from Barclays Capital Real Estate through an affiliate, according to public filings cited by the Mercury News. Newmark executives Steven Golubchik, Edmund Najera, Darren Hollak and Brendan Raney had marketed the property for sale per the real estate brochure.
A Tale of Two San Jose Office Markets
The Assembly sale stands in sharp contrast to another North First Street transaction earlier this year. The Rio Tech Park campus at 3545 North First Street sold for $164.3 million in April, roughly 13.3 percent below its county tax assessment, Hoodline reported in its piece on the Rio Tech Park sale. That gap illustrates a widening divide between fully leased, power-heavy manufacturing campuses and more traditional office properties that have struggled to find buyers at anywhere near their assessed value.
Another major transaction involved a joint venture of TMG Partners, Grove Real Estate Partners and Lone Star Funds, which acquired a 2.2 million-square-foot, 50-building Silicon Valley R&D portfolio for roughly $650 million weeks before the Assembly sale closed. The deal included the 266,800-square-foot North First @ Orchard Station campus for $210 million, according to the Registry's reporting on that transaction.
The Assembly sale puts a spotlight on a campus whose tenant mix includes artificial intelligence, advanced manufacturing and robotics companies.
