Months after announcing a move to Bellevue, artificial intelligence powerhouse OpenAI has picked out its new digs.
The Microsoft-backed company behind ChatGPT, an AI-powered chatbot, will occupy at least two floors of the City Center Plaza office tower in Bellevue, according to public records obtained by The Seattle Times. The 26-story tower at 555 110th Ave. N.E. was fully occupied by Microsoft until 2023.
OpenAI was hunting for an office in Bellevue since at least July of last year. The company confirmed in October it was expanding to the Seattle area and posted multiple job openings for the region. The company sought permits for a Bellevue WeWork-leased office in November as well, according to city permit records.
As first reported by the Puget Sound Business Journal, OpenAI filed plans for stories 15 through 17 of City Center Plaza in March, equaling roughly 69,000 square feet. The company’s predevelopment plans called for 370 desks, with stairs connecting the three floors. Level 17 will also have a cafeteria.
But plans filed in May show only two floors, with level 15 absent. Tenant improvement plans for the almost 23,000-square-foot level 15 were also canceled, according to city permit records.
OpenAI did not respond to a request for comment. CBRE, the leasing brokerage for the tower, declined to comment.
As of December, OpenAI had more than 2,000 employees, mostly in the Bay Area. The company hasn’t said how many are based in the Seattle area but LinkedIn lists almost 80 employees in the region.
OpenAI has a close relationship with Microsoft. The Redmond-based tech giant has committed billions to OpenAI in exchange for the use of its AI models to build out Microsoft’s Copilot products. OpenAI CEO and industry wunderkind Sam Altman has also joined Microsoft’s developer-focused Build conference the past two years, sharing conversations with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.
OpenAI’s move into former Microsoft space may be coincidental.
Bellevue has a higher office vacancy rate than it did pre-COVID-19, but Bellevue scooped up big-name tenants like TikTok and Walmart over the past few years. Zoom and e-commerce platform Shopify recently nabbed offices in Bellevue as well.
Most of those companies are taking former Microsoft offices. With the slow opening of the company’s $5 billion Redmond campus renovation and the work-from-home revolution running parallel, Microsoft ditched Bellevue. In 2021, the company had 9,300 employees based in the city. Bellevue’s 2023 financial report didn’t list Microsoft has a top employer.
Collectively, Microsoft vacated about 1.9 million square feet of office in downtown Bellevue since 2023. It’s left behind two floors for its subsidiary LinkedIn, enough to hold about 120 employees, according to Bellevue public records.
Microsoft’s exodus caused downtown Bellevue’s office availability rate to spike. More than 30% of office space in the city’s core was available to lease in 2023, according to a recent report from The Broderick Group, a Bellevue-based brokerage. That’s since fallen slightly to 26%, still high compared with the 5% the city was enjoying in 2019.
Landlords and brokers have to patch together tenants to fill the massive holes left behind by Microsoft. Amazon grabbed hundreds of thousands of square feet of space before the pandemic, but there hasn’t been a similar company to come in to save the day.
Buildings like City Center Plaza and Lincoln Square North, both of which mostly housed Microsoft, have taken on a collection of new tenants. Lincoln Square North, across the street from the Bellevue Square mall, has a mix of TikTok, Pokemon and a few startups. City Center Plaza has secured Wells Fargo, an engineering firm and now OpenAI, though multiple floors still sit empty.
For Bellevue and perhaps the broader Seattle region, AI firms could be the hope landlords need if a tech giant doesn’t come along again.
“Considering the scale of AI growth in other tech hubs, particularly the Bay Area, this sector could be a catalyst for the market and worth tracking over the next year,” The Broderick Group’s report said.