Salesforce and WeWork are taking their relationship to the next level: They’re moving in together.
Salesforce Tower, a 1,070-foot-high skyscraper that will be the tallest and most expensive building in San Francisco when it’s completed, has signed on WeWork as a major tenant. The co-working giant will lease three floors for its second headquarters (the other is in New York City), according to Recode. Some space will be designated as WeWork office rentals.
WeWork, a startup that leases trendy, millennial-friendly office space to startups and Fortune 500 companies, has been scooping up real estate after a $4 billion funding infusion from SoftBank. Its $20 billion valuation makes it the most valuable startup in New York.
In April, Salesforce opened the doors of Salesforce Tower to the media for a sneak peak inside.
"It seems like everywhere I am in this city or around the Bay, I can see this tower," Marc Benioff, founder and CEO of Salesforce, told the crowd at the event.
Take a look inside the new $1.1 billion Salesforce Tower.
Salesforce and its billionaire CEO, Marc Benioff, are riding high these days.
Salesforce celebrated 18 years in business earlier this year. It was No. 8 on Fortune's 100 Best Companies to Work For in 2017, and the cloud-computing company is on track to become a $100 billion organization in the next three years, according to some analysts.
The near completion of Salesforce Tower is the cherry on top. It rises 61 stories over the city's Financial District, making it the tallest building west of Chicago that's capable of being occupied.
It was originally named Transbay Tower, but the enterprise giant bought the naming rights in a landmark real-estate deal. Salesforce will pay the developer Boston Properties close to $560 million over 15 and a half years to lease 30 floors at the tower, on Mission and Fremont streets.
About 87% of the 1.4 million-square-foot building has been leased to other companies, including WeWork, Bain & Company, Accenture, and CBRE, a real-estate group.
Source: San Francisco Business Times
"It's a great deal more than simply another office building," said Fred Clarke of Pelli Clarke Pelli Architects. He called it a "display of optimism" that San Francisco's future is bright.
Some 700 construction workers are on site every day, working around the clock to complete Salesforce Tower, according to Boston Properties. It's expected to open in early 2018.
Clarke said the building was "firmly and safely socketed into earth's bedrock" — a slight dig at the tower's next-door neighbor, the leaning, sinking Millennium Tower.
Salesforce Tower has a slender, tapering silhouette with curved corners. Thirteen-foot ceilings and 10-foot continuous-glass windows will provide abundant daylight.
Each floor will have metal sunshades, which are basically automated awnings. They move throughout the day to maximize light and prevent the sun from overheating the offices.
Source: Pelli Clarke Pelli Architects
The tower will have direct access to the new Transbay Transit Center, which is under construction next door. It will connect eight Bay Area counties through 11 transit systems.
The bus terminal's rooftop park and 100,000 square feet of retail space will be steps away. (Salesforce Tower will also have retailers, though they have yet to be announced.)
Salesforce Tower is expected to hold 10,000 Salesforce employees — about one-third of the company's global workforce — according to Benioff.
"I can't tell you how many times people say to me, 'Well, where's your office going to be on the top floor?'" Benioff said. "I don't have an office on the top floor!"
Salesforce offices will take up the bottom 30 floors, but the company will also lease the top two floors. They will function as communal spaces for team meetings and events.
Benioff said the 61st floor was called the Ohana Floor, a nod to the company's community-centric culture and his obsession with Hawaii. (Ohana means "family" in Hawaiian.) Salesforce will allow nonprofit groups and nongovernmental organizations to rent the event space for free.
Business Insider had the chance to ride this rickety elevator to the 60th floor, the second-highest level at Salesforce Tower. It's an active construction zone.
We were not disappointed.
Salesforce Tower would sit in the shadows of many skyscrapers in cities like New York or Dubai. But in San Francisco, it towers over the city's best-known landmarks.
The 60th floor has a ways to go before its completion. Massive glass panels sit stacked on the floor, and nimble cables separate construction workers from a 1,000-foot drop.
Salesforce Tower will certainly be an impressive place to hold a meeting.
