10 hours Ago By By Troy Wolverton | Examiner staff writer |
San Francisco just got a $1 billion vote of confidence from its second most valuable startup. Databricks announced last week it plans to move its headquarters to a new, larger office space downtown , expects to double its workforce in The City in two years and has committed to holding its annual user conference in San Francisco through 2030. All told, the company, which offers data storage and analysis services for AI technology providers, expects to invest $1 billion in The City over the next three years, it said.
If you ask Amy Reichanadter, Databricks’ chief people officer, why the company decided to ramp up its commitment to San Francisco and downtown, she’ll tell you it was something of a no-brainer. Most notably, The City offers access to a wealth of AI experts and engineers, she told The Examiner. And San Francisco as a city is on the upswing, she said.
“We believe strongly in San Francisco, and wanted to continue to support The City,” Reichanadter said. “We’re optimistic about the future,” she said. Founded in Berkeley in 2013, Databricks has made its home in San Francisco for the last 10 years .
About 1,000 of its 8,000 total employees are based in The City, according to Reichanadter. Its current headquarters is located at 160 Spear St. In January, the startup closed a $10 billion equity funding round and raised another $5.
25 billion in debt in a deal that valued it at $62 billion. Databricks announced at the time that while it planned to use some of the money to buy back shares from its employees, it planned to devote some of it to growth. A good portion of that growth will be here in San Francisco.
The company said Thursday it had leased 150,000 square feet of space in One Sansome Street. Spread over several floors, the new space is about 50% bigger than its current offices on Spear, according to Reichanadter. Databricks needs to finish out its new offices, and expects to move into them around the summer of 2026, she said.
But that’s likely just the start of Databricks’ San Francisco expansion. The company’s local workforce is already too big to fit into its current headquarters, Reichanadter said. By the time it moves into its new space, it likely will have about enough people to fill up its new offices, she said.
To accommodate the additional people it plans to hire, Databricks has an option to lease more space at One Sansome, she said. In fact, it intends to double its space there in the coming years, the company said in a press release. Databricks is “really, really excited to stay in San Francisco and invest in The City,” Reichanadter said.
She didn’t disclose what the company is paying for its new space. Its new lease comes as downtown is seeing near-record vacancy levels in office space , as many companies shrank or pulled out of their offices after embracing remote and hybrid work during the COVID-19 pandemic. The company’s existing and future headquarters are close to each other in the Financial District.
Databricks decided to stay downtown in part because the location is convenient for employees who are commuting via Muni or BART, Reichanadter said. But also, the company just liked the space, she said. “It felt like it met a lot of our requirements, and it’s a beautiful space, so we’re really excited about it,” she said.
With the upcoming move to the new space, there likely will not only be more Databricks employees in San Francisco, but more of them in the office. Because of the limited amount of space in its current offices, Databricks has different in-office policies for different sets of employees, Reichanadter said. It has asked some, like those on its research-and-development teams, to be in the office three days a week.
But others are only in the office one-to-two days per week, she said. The company plans to adjust those policies once it moves, she said. She declined to say what the new policy will be, but indicated more employees will be asked to be in the office more often.
“We would like to continue to invest in having people together, so we’ll revisit the policy at the time that we have the space available and see what makes sense,” she said. In addition to expanding its presence in The City, Databricks plans to keep on holding its user conference here. After drawing in about 15,000 people last year, the event should host 20,000 this June at Moscone Center, Reichanadter said.
By 2030, the company expects attendance to hit 50,000, she said. Databricks projected the event will generate $980 million in “business value” for The City through 2030. The company’s announcements add to some recent good business news for San Francisco.
On Monday, OpenAI, The City’s most valuable startup, opened its new headquarters in Mission Bay. Meanwhile, Moscone has seen an uptick in scheduled events. After hosting just 25 last year, it already has 29 booked this year, said Abby Raisz, a research director at the Bay Area Council Economic Institute.
Given the lumps San Francisco’s economy and downtown have taken since the pandemic, Databricks’ announcements are good news, Raisz said. They’re representative of how The City has become a hub for the AI industry. And announcements like those from OpenAI and Databricks that they’re expanding in San Francisco are likely to spur others to do the same, she said.
“The more big companies, especially in this particular subsector of tech, [start] to invest in The City, more will follow suit. And then it just sort of snowballs,” Raisz said. “And I think that's what we’re seeing play out now.
” If you have a tip about tech, startups or the venture industry, contact Troy Wolverton at [email protected] or via text or Signal at 415.515.
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