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Europe’s biggest technology company is investing in San Francisco, bucking the trend of tech flight from the downtown corridor.
SAP, a business software company based in Germany, is slated to open a 30K SF office at 135 Townsend St. in the SoMa neighborhood, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
The company counts Oracle and Salesforce, both of which are business software companies headquartered in San Francisco, as competitors.
Yaad Oren, managing director of SAP Labs U.S. and head of SAP Innovation Center Network, told the Chronicle that the company was eager to leverage San Francisco’s role as a hub for tech innovation to its advantage.
“We have amazing talent there that’s very eager to come to the office,” he said.
Mayor London Breed touted the development on Twitter Tuesday afternoon.
“Part of our economic recovery is about bringing new businesses and companies to San Francisco throughout our Downtown and surrounding areas,” she wrote. “Thank you SAP for choosing San Francisco to grow your business and bringing up to 500 jobs to South Beach.”
San Francisco has one of the highest office vacancy rates in the United States, with the latest figures released by CBRE coming in just shy of 30%.
Salesforce has been dumping office space in the downtown corridor, as many technology companies have seen a deceleration in growth, leading to layoffs while embracing a hybrid or remote work model requiring less time in the office.
Oracle, too, has offloaded office space in San Francisco and around the Bay Area. Pinterest, Meta, Reddit and Block have also shed office space in the last year as the Bay Area continues its pandemic recovery.
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