Rakuten takes over part of Glassdoor sublease in SF office tower

Monday marked the opening of a new office housing the international division of Japanese tech conglomerate Rakuten Group — which is well-known in the Bay Area as the official jersey badge sponsor of the Golden State Warriors — in San Francisco’s South Financial District.

In a deal that was completed late last year, Rakuten International signed on to take over 29,000 square feet of office space on the 18th floor of 300 Mission St., a 24-story office tower owned by Paramount Group at the corner of Beale and Mission Streets.

Rakuten’s new space represents a slice of the 117,000-square-foot office that workplace review platform Glassdoor leased in 2019 as part of a bid to relocate its Mill Valley headquarters to San Francisco, but partially listed for sublease just a year later. Rakuten has an option to extend its two-year contract for the sublease at 300 Mission through 2030, a company spokesperson confirmed on Monday.

Glassdoor aspired to move into 300 Mission in the fall of 2020, but the COVID-19 pandemic delayed its relocation plan. By November 2020, Glassdoor listed nearly 60,000 square feet of its brand-new San Francisco office as available for subleasing. 

Rakuten’s regional headquarters are in San Mateo, where the company owns a roughly 215,000-square-foot campus at 700, 800 and 900 Concor Dr. For the past nine years, Rakuten has also leased a roughly 24,000-square-foot office at 160 Spear St. in San Francisco.

Rakuten’s spokesperson said that while the company is not planning any changes to its real estate footprint in San Mateo at this time, the lease for its San Francisco office on Spear Street has expired.

Rakuten’s former office spanned two floors, while the new space — which is located just two blocks from 160 Spear — is spread across a single floor and is a “clear upgrade in terms of amenities and the ability to collaborate within the space,” the spokesperson said. 

“It continues to allow our people their simple commute options, which, all in all, seemed like a better response to the end of that lease than consolidating all of our operations to our headquarters down in San Mateo,” the spokesperson said.

Sublease space is also generally cheaper and offers more flexible terms to tenants who may be unsure about their own space needs in the wake of the pandemic, which has caused San Francisco’s overall office vacancy rate to skyrocket to 35.9% at the end of 2023, per data provided by real estate services firm CBRE, as many downtown-based companies continue to give up more space than they are leasing amid a pronounced shift to remote work. 

Rakuten currently has 550 Bay Area employees, which includes local employees that are working remotely. A total of 160 will be assigned to the new office at 300 Mission St. 

“As our lease was running out and we considered our options, we realized that the heart of our business and its attraction to a new generation of technology workers was directly connected to maintaining a presence in one of the world’s most exciting, beautiful and tech-forward cities,” said Rakuten International’s CEO, Amit Patel, in a statement on Monday.