Salesforce to ‘max out’ S.F. staff, drop an office
Salesforce said Tuesday that it is subleasing its offices at Rincon Center at 101 Spear St. in San Francisco, as it consolidates most of its staff into three high-rises near the Transbay Terminal.
The San Francisco company, which sells software that helps businesses manage sales and customer support, opened Salesforce Tower at First and Mission streets, the city’s tallest high-rise, in January. Salesforce is the city’s largest tech company, with 7,500 employees.
“With Salesforce Tower now open, we are thrilled to bring our San Francisco employees closer together in our world-class HQ urban campus,” the company said.
For now, it is retaining its headquarters building at 1 Market St., which it had previously said it planned to sublease, according to reports.
Besides Salesforce Tower, the company has Salesforce West at 50 Fremont St., which it owns, and Salesforce East at 350 Mission St., which it leases. The company also occupies part of 123 Mission St. Even after subleasing Rincon Center, the company will have more than 2 million square feet of office space in San Francisco, according to an analysis by CoStar Group.
Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff told The Chronicle’s editorial board this month that the company plans to “max out” with 10,000 employees in San Francisco. The company also has a large presence in Indianapolis, with a 48-floor Salesforce Tower in that city.
“Millennials want to be in cities,” Benioff said. “They want to work for companies in cities.”
Salesforce, which moved into Rincon Center in 2014, will sublease about 259,000 square feet of office space there, according to real estate data from CoStar Group.
It is unclear what business will take over Salesforce’s Rincon Center space.
Mark Ritchie, president of commercial real estate firm Ritchie Commercial, says the demand for office space among tech companies is “unrelenting.” Companies such as Google and Facebook have become “digital nation states” in terms of their size and influence, he said. Last year, Facebook, headquartered in Menlo Park, signed a lease for 432,000 square feet of office space at 181 Fremont St. in San Francisco, according to the CoStar Group.