ByteDance is expanding in the Seattle area.
A third quarter report from real estate firm Broderick Group reveals that TikTok owner ByteDance recently subleased another 66,000 square-feet of office space from enterprise tech giant SAP Concur at the Key Center building in downtown Bellevue, Wash., just east of Seattle.
ByteDance first expanded in the area in October 2021 when it subleased a 44,000-square-foot office from SAP Concur at the Key Center.
Under traditional office occupancy guidelines, the 66,000-square-foot space expansion could accommodate more than 300 additional employees.
The Information reported last month that ByteDance was using the Seattle area “as the base for an aggressive expansion into online shopping,” and was attracted by the talent and other tech companies in the region. The China-based social media company has more than 100 job openings in the Seattle area, which is home to e-commerce giant Amazon and others.
We’ve reached out to ByteDance for more details about its expansion and will update if we hear back.
Puget Sound Business Journal reported on the new lease earlier Wednesday.
ByteDance recently expanded its footprint in the Los Angeles suburb of Culver City, Calif. It has additional U.S. offices in cities including Mountain View, San Francisco, Austin, Chicago, New York, and Washington D.C.
TikTok recently rolled out new employee-tracking tools in the U.S. to measure office attendance, rankling some workers, according to a report from The New York Times last month. TikTok has around 7,000 U.S. employees, according to the Times.
TikTok has come under scrutiny from U.S. lawmakers for the past several years due to ByteDance’s ownership and fears of Chinese government involvement.
ByteDance also operates the news platform Toutiao in China, social media platform Helo in India, and collaboration app Lark in Japan and Singapore.
Here are some other tidbits from Broderick Group’s Q3 report focusing on the Eastside, which includes Microsoft’s headquarters in Redmond and large footprints for Amazon and Meta:
- The Eastside has experienced an “eruption of tenant demand” over the past two months. “These range from renewals, to existing Bellevue tenant expansions, to relocation from Seattle, to new tenants planting a flag from out of state,” the report notes. “The tenant demand is much-welcomed after nearly two years of tepid activity.”
- However, more than 25% of space on the Eastside is listed as available or vacant — “levels of supply never seen.”
- Return-to-office mandates from Amazon — which is building several new towers in Bellevue — and Meta are helping increase foot and auto traffic.
- Microsoft, the Eastside’s largest tenant, is giving up more than 2.7 million square-feet of space in Bellevue over the next two years. “Microsoft’s focus is to consolidate the employees who elect to work from an office to their Redmond campus and create an active sense of place,” the report noted.
