Tech HQ Moving From Sunnyvale to Santa Clara
- Illumio signed a lease to move its headquarters from Sunnyvale to Santa Clara, taking 120,000 square feet at Campus at Scott as the complex reboots. - The space is big enough to anchor most of one building at the 460,000-square-foot campus, which changed hands in 2025 at a steep discount. - That matters because South Bay office owners have been waiting for exactly this — a real tech tenant, not just tour traffic.
Silicon Valley office real estate is having one of those weird in-between moments. Vacancy is still high. A lot of buildings still feel stranded in the post-2020 market. But Illumio’s decision to move its headquarters from Sunnyvale to Santa Clara is the kind of deal landlords have been desperate to point to — an actual tech company taking a big block of space, not just talking about it. ### What actually happened? Illumio signed a lease for 120,000 square feet at Campus at Scott, a three-building office complex at 3315, 3325, and 3355 Scott Boulevard in Santa Clara. The company plans to relocate its headquarters there from Sunnyvale. Ellis Partners — working with Baupost Group on the property — has been repositioning the campus after buying it in 2025. (mercurynews.com) ### Why is 120,000 square feet a big deal? Because this is not a small satellite office. Campus at Scott totals a little over 460,000 square feet, so Illumio is taking a meaningful chunk of the whole project. In a market where many landlords have been carving up buildings into smaller deals or waiting out empty floors, landing one tenant at that size changes the math fast — for leasing momentum, lender confidence, and the story owners can tell the next prospect. (news.theregistrysf.com) ### Why Santa Clara instead of Sunnyvale? The simple answer is product and location. Campus at Scott is being renovated and marketed as a Class A campus near Santa Clara Square, with freeway access and a dense amenity cluster nearby. That matters more than it sounds. Companies that still want offices are getting pickier — fewer locations, better buildings, easier commutes, more food and services close by. Moving a headquarters now usually means upgrading quality, not just changing ZIP codes. (news.theregistrysf.com) That last point is an inference from how these deals are getting done, but it fits the property’s positioning. ### Who owns the campus? Ellis Partners and Baupost Group bought Campus at Scott in August 2025. Industry sources told CoStar the deal was around $207 million, or about $450 per square foot. The striking part is the markdown — the same property traded for roughly $305 million in 2015, near the top of the old tech-boom office cycle. Basically, the new owners bought low and are betting that better space plus recovering demand can rebuild value. (nmrk.com) ### Does this mean the office market is back? Not exactly. One lease does not fix Silicon Valley office demand. But it does show what is leasing: upgraded, well-located campuses that can still attract established tech tenants. That is different from the broad “everyone is returning” story people kept predicting. Turns out the recovery looks selective — premium buildings first, weaker ones maybe much later, or never. (costar.com) ### Why does Illumio matter here? Illumio is not just any tenant filling space. It is a cybersecurity company with an active product and partnership cadence in 2026, still putting out launches and alliances around breach containment and hybrid-cloud security. For a landlord, that is useful signaling — a current, operating tech company choosing the campus for its headquarters, not a legacy tenant slowly shrinking in place. (mercurynews.com) ### What changes on the ground? Commuting patterns could shift a bit inside the South Bay, but the bigger effect is symbolic. A headquarters move inside Silicon Valley says companies are still willing to commit to physical space when the building is good enough and the economics make sense. That gives neighboring landlords a comp, gives brokers a fresh talking point, and gives buyers one more reason to believe distressed pricing can still turn into a workable office bet. (illumio.com) ### Bottom line This is a real estate story more than a corporate strategy drama. Illumio found a newer headquarters setup in Santa Clara. Ellis Partners found the kind of anchor tenant that can help validate a turnaround. And the South Bay office market got one concrete sign that demand has not disappeared — it has just gotten a lot more selective. (news.theregistrysf.com) (mercurynews.com)
