TikTok Rapidly Grows Office Footprint, Toughens RTO Policy
The social media giant is eyeing 600K SF in San Jose, Seattle, Nashville.
TikTok is undertaking a rapid expansion of its U.S. office footprint as it toughens its return to office mandate on workers.
The Chinese-owned social media giant is shopping for what could be more than 600K SF in San Jose, Seattle and Nashville, rapidly expanding an office footprint that now encompasses space in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Austin.
TikTok is using a customized app to monitor its tougher return-to-office policy, which requires its U.S. workforce of 7,000 to be in the physical office at least three days a week, with an unspecified number of workers required to come in five days a week.
The app, which TikTok calls My RTO, tracks badge swipes to determine if employees are fulfilling the RTO mandate.
TikTok is in talks to occupy 100K SF of the newly built 16-story Moore Building on Music Row in Nashville. Los Angeles-based TikTok has been leasing three floors encompassing about 50K SF at One Nashville, anchoring a WeWork space, according to a report in CoStar.
TikTok parent ByteDance is negotiating a sublease agreement that will expand its footprint at the former Roku complex in San Jose from 660K SF to more than 1M SF, the report said.
ByteDance currently subleases two buildings on Coleman Avenue that Roku decided to vacate in its Coleman Highline portfolio last year. Roku is still seeking a tenant for two other buildings at the Coleman complex.
TikTok also is finalizing plans to double its space at the Lincoln Square North Tower in Bellevue, WA, where it currently leases about 132K SF, taking space that was offloaded by Microsoft last year. TikTok occupies 100K SF in the Key Center, about a block away from the Lincoln Square tower, the report said.
TikTok won’t have any trouble locating available tech space in West Coast locations as many opportunities exist in space listed for sublease by tech companies that have been downsizing their footprints.
Analysts are predicting that TikTok’s U.S. revenue will increase by more than 25% in 2024 to $11B, an amount equal to 3.5% of the total digital ad spend in the country.