Brand-name companies ditching or cutting their San Francisco office space may have dominated headlines in recent years, but in every crisis, there is opportunity.
Adyen, one of Europe’s largest payment processing companies—akin to PayPal or Stripe—has just agreed to sublease an entire six-story office building at 505 Brannan St. in the SoMa neighborhood from Pinterest, multiple sources familiar with the deal have confirmed.
Once it is finalized in the coming weeks, the deal, which totals 150,000 square feet, will represent San Francisco’s biggest office lease so far this year.
The move comes a little over a month after Japanese tech conglomerate Rakuten, made a similar move—subleasing an entire floor from Glassdoor at 300 Mission St.
The office building at Brannan Street became available last year when Pinterest started drastically reducing its presence in San Francisco in the wake of the pandemic. At its height, the popular social media company once leased four separate offices in the city.
Pinterest, which still maintains its headquarters nearby at 651 Brannan St., did not respond to requests for comment. Of note, the company also paid $90 million in 2020 to exit a pre-lease agreement that it had signed for the yet-to-be-built, and now indefinitely delayed, 88 Bluxome building.
At the newly built 505 Brannan St., Pinterest had a lease that runs until May 2033. A source confirmed that Adyen's sublease will run through the entirety of that term.
The Dutch financial tech firm saw its shares rebound as much as 24% last week after a four-year low last October. In its latest earnings statement, Adyen cited its growth in North America, where it has a partnership with U.S. firm Cash App, as one of the primary factors for its better-than-expected revenue growth.
Adyen opened its San Francisco office in 2012 and has steadily grown its presence in the city since then. San Francisco represents its biggest market for employees outside of Amsterdam, and the company has continued to hire workers in the market, going from 200 at the end of 2021 to 300 at the end of 2023, according to financial filings.
Adyen, which already has another office nearby at 274 Brannan St., did not respond to requests for comment. While it is not immediately clear if the firm will retain those offices, its recent expansion also comes in the wake of its competitors shedding workers.
Last month, PayPal and Block announced they would cull a combined 3,500 workers in an effort to reduce costs. A year prior, Stripe—once valued at $74 billion—laid off over 1,100 workers.
Real estate firm JLL handled the leasing of 505 Brannan St.
According to the firm’s latest San Francisco office report, it is estimated that 28 million square feet of the city’s office buildings are currently vacant. Of that, more than 8 million square feet are available for sublease.