While the center of the Amazonverse may have shifted east in 2018, the wider tech industry’s desire to tap Seattle’s famous talent pool has only intensified this year. In the last six months, a number of tech giants from Silicon Valley and elsewhere have announced plans to open or expand offices in the Puget Sound region, many of which are due to open their doors in 2019.
While much of the activity centers on perpetually under-construction South Lake Union — where Amazon, Google and Facebook appear locked in a race to build the tallest tower — outer cities like Bellevue and Redmond certainly aren’t missing out on the action. These are the seven big tech office announcements we’ll be watching through 2019 and beyond.
Apple made headlines last week with the announcement of a new 133-acre campus in Austin, Texas. However, as part of its planned expansion, the company also said it would open a new Seattle office, which will add more than 1,000 employees to its headcount in the city. The Cupertino giant is notorious for its secrecy, and details about its current operations here are thin on the ground. According to The Seattle Times, Apple currently employs around 1,000 people in the state, including six retail locations and an engineering center in Vancouver, Washington. The company first arrived in Seattle in 2014 when it acquired cloud and datacenter networking startup, Union Bay Networks, which it followed up with a purchase of UW machine learning spinout, Turi, in 2016.
After opening a small engineering center in April, tech-driven real estate broker Compass decided to double down on its Seattle presence and base its west region product and engineering campus in the city. Headquartered in New York City, the company is currently looking for 100 engineers in Seattle, who will work at Compass’ offices at the Industrious coworking space for now. The announcement came hot on the heels of news that Compass had hired former Microsoft Chief Technology Officer of Artificial Intelligence, Joseph Sirosh, earlier this month.
Autonomous vehicle builder Cruise Automation announced last month that it was looking to open an office in the northwest with room for 100 to 200 engineers by the end of 2019. The company, which is headquartered in San Francisco, was acquired by General Motors in 2016 in a deal worth more than $1 billion, according to Fortune. Cruise hasn’t yet decided whether it will build its Puget Sound office in Seattle or a nearby tech hub, like Redmond or Bellevue, according to Geekwire.
With plans to dramatically increase its presence in South Lake Union, Facebook is reportedly signing office leases in several buildings currently under construction, according to a report by the Puget Sound Business Journal. The deals add over one million square feet of office space across a pair of towers known as 333 Dexter — due to open this summer — along with the Dexter Yard project — due for completion in 2021 — a few blocks down the street (pictured above). Meanwhile, the social media giant is also building a large campus for its Oculus wing in Redmond, according to Geekwire. That project will add an additional 630,000 square feet to Facebook’s Puget Sound office space, which is also due for completion in 2021.
After beginning construction on a massive Seattle campus last year, Google has reportedly signed Vulcan Real Estate to develop a third office block in South Lake Union. The original two blocks — which will house over 600,000 square feet sprawling across four buildings between Valley and Mercer streets on the southern shore of Lake Union — are due to open in the first half of 2019. Details on the new development are scant, but Geekwire reports that the latest building will house 322,000 square feet of office space across 12 stories. Meanwhile, the company is increasing its Eastside presence as well, having reportedly signed a lease for 80,000 square feet at the One Twelfth @ Twelfth building in downtown Bellevue. The company’s Puget Sound workforce currently operates out of large bases in Fremont and Kirkland (pictured above).
In September, Uber confirmed plans to expand its engineering office, signing a lease for 115,000 square feet of office space in the Second and Seneca Building in downtown Seattle. The company plans to open the space in the summer of 2019 with room for up to 750 employees, more than doubling its current local workforce.
