AI Tenants Took Half of Tech Office Leasing. The Rest of Tech Is Retreating.
AI firms took 51.1% of TAMI office leasing through the second quarter, pushing the sector past its 2021 peak while non-AI tech's share of new leasing sank to its lowest since 2020. New York's expiries reprice into the AI bid; San Francisco's already price below in-place rents.
Vincent Jiang · 3 min read
One engine, three cities
AI companies took 51.1% of technology, advertising, media and information office leasing in major U.S. markets through the second quarter, up from 20.2% in 2025, according to CompStak's biannual office report 1. That one cohort pushed TAMI to 26.6% of all office leasing, past its 26.0% peak in 2021 1.
The rest of the sector kept retreating: non-AI TAMI tenants took 13.0% of total leasing, their lowest reading since CompStak's analysis began in 2020, against 24.4% in 2021 1. New York, San Francisco and the Bay Area captured 77.1% of new TAMI leasing, New York City alone 38.1% 1.
New York reprices into the AI bid
About 27.4% of leased gateway office space expires between 2026 and 2028, and the split by market is stark 1. New York market rents sit 22.7% above in-place rents, with 78.9% of expiring space positioned to reprice higher 1. San Francisco is the only gateway market on the other side of zero, its market rent running 9.0% below current rents 1.
New York market rents sit 22.7% above in-place; San Francisco sits 9.0% below
Data
| Market rent vs in-place rent | |
|---|---|
| New York City | 22.7% |
| Phoenix | 19.7% |
| San Francisco | -9% |
The landlords already collecting
SL Green, Manhattan's largest office landlord, says it signed 129 Manhattan leases totaling 1,760,649 square feet this year, at rents 15.8% above the previous fully escalated rents on the same spaces 2. Its Manhattan occupancy reached 94.7% in the second quarter, up from 90.4% a year earlier, on new leases averaging $98.42 per square foot, 18% above the rents they replaced 3.
The AI cohort pays for the privilege: starting rents averaged $89.01 per square foot versus $75.21 for everyone else, an 18.3% premium 1. Its average lease term has also stretched to 80.3 months, from a 49.2-month trough in 2024 1.
AI tenants pay an 18.3% premium; Manhattan's biggest landlord averages more still
Data
| Value | |
|---|---|
| SL Green, Manhattan new leases | $98.42 |
| AI cohort | $89.01 |
| All other TAMI tenants | $75.21 |
Tenants signing against losses
Anthropic signed 412,875 square feet at 300 Howard in San Francisco 1 while weighing an IPO investors peg at up to $2 trillion, with marketing possible the week of 9 November 4.
Its prospectus shows a $42 billion net loss on nearly $4.6 billion of 2025 revenue, $518 billion of planned cloud, computing and infrastructure spending, and nearly a quarter of revenue from two customers 5. PayPal took 260,872 square feet at 345 Hudson 1, then filed notice in August to cut 251 headquarters jobs, more than 100 of them engineering roles, as part of a plan to cut roughly 20% of its global workforce 6.
San Francisco holds the exposure
The same demand is not lifting both coasts. San Francisco office vacancy ran 25.9%, the highest of any major market 7, and office-using job openings fell 8.8% year over year in July 1. Hudson Pacific just sold two SoMa buildings for $65.5 million, one of them fully vacant 7. CompStak's own research desk calls AI leasing a two-market story, with Manhattan closing in 8.
The split points to one trade, long the New York 2026-28 expiry reprice and out of the San Francisco-exposed owners, and it gets its first public test the week of 9 November, when Anthropic's roadshow prices the cohort underwriting this recovery 4. Until non-AI tech stops shrinking, the record TAMI share is concentration, not breadth.
Deepdive
AI-generated from this story and its cited sources. Not investment advice.
