Microsoft Puts Up 27K sf Berkeley Offices for Sublease

Microsoft is ditching windows across the Bay Area, including those in a 27,200-square-foot office in Berkeley.

The Redmond, Wash.-based software giant has put its office in the Berkeley Way West building at 1919 Shattuck Avenue up for sublease, the San Francisco Business Times reported.

The listing comes as Microsoft markets for sublease its 49,000 square feet of offices at 555 California Street in San Francisco, announced a few days ago.

Microsoft signed its lease at Berkeley Way West in 2020, making it one of the few big tech companies to move into the East Bay. The building is owned by the University of California.

At the time, the company said its Semantic Machines and Autonomous Systems, which both focus on developing new artificial intelligence technologies, would benefit from being near UC Berkeley, as well as the university-affiliated Berkeley Artificial Intelligence Research Lab.

It’s not clear how many offices Microsoft, which has a hybrid work policy, occupies across the region.

The firm has a 643,000-square-foot campus in Mountain View, according to the Business Times. It once occupied offices at 680 Folsom Street and 1355 Market Street in San Francisco.

In the past few years, Microsoft has shed more than 2 million square feet of offices in Greater Seattle, while putting expansion plans on hold, according to the Puget Sound Business Journal.

Marketing brochures for Microsoft’s offices at Berkeley Way West say rates are negotiable. Its lease expires in 2026.

UC Berkeley has said it welcomed private tenants as a way to offset costs, but would reclaim the building for university use once its revenue goals for the property had been met.

The 2.3-million-square-foot Berkeley office market, with few offices available before the pandemic, had a 9.6 percent vacancy rate in the third quarter, according to Cushman & Wakefield.

— Dana Bartholomew