VTS Report Finds AI Companies Now Account for Nearly Half of Active Tech Office Demand

With AI tenants now accounting for nearly half of all active national tech square footage, new report highlights that demand is concentrating into a handful of submarkets.

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--VTS, the industry’s only technology platform that unifies owners, operators, brokers and their customers across the real estate ecosystem, today released the VTS AI Office Demand Report, the first analysis of its kind to quantify the impact of AI companies on commercial office demand using live, forward-looking pipeline data. The report finds national AI office demand has increased 85 percent year-over-year. Demand across the industry’s largest AI hubs has grown 179 percent, concentrating on a small number of submarkets at a speed and intensity that metro-level vacancy statistics have not yet reflected.

The capital backdrop driving this demand is unprecedented. In Q1 2026, global private investment in AI reached $226 billion, the largest funding quarter in the sector’s history, with the U.S. capturing $206 billion of that total. That capital is translating directly into office demand, AI companies now account for 34 percent of active tech requirements that VTS tracks nationally, and 46 percent of the square footage. AI tenants are looking at larger footprints, with the average requirement being 37 percent larger than the average tech deal, with the average AI requirement measuring approximately 37,000 square feet. As many of the leading AI companies continue to mature, and several move toward the public markets, those investments are increasingly translating into long-term operational decisions, including where they establish and expand their office footprints.

“The conversation around AI has largely focused on capital raised and technological breakthroughs,” said Nick Romito, CEO of VTS. “From where we sit, one of the clearest indicators of the industry's next phase is where companies choose to establish long-term operations, creating new patterns of office demand well before they're reflected in traditional market data.

San Francisco, Silicon Valley and New York have emerged as the nation’s leading AI office markets, together accounting for nearly two-thirds of all active AI square footage tracked by VTS. San Francisco leads with 81 active AI requirements totaling more than 5 million square feet, while Silicon Valley has emerged as a complementary hub for AI hardware, semiconductor and infrastructure companies. New York continues to attract application-layer AI companies and enterprise infrastructure providers, with 45 active AI requirements totaling just under 2.8 million square feet which average 61,000 square feet per requirement. The average AI requirement in San Francisco and New York is nearly double the Gateway seven-market average tech requirement and reflects how quickly AI companies are committing to enterprise-scale operations, even in the early stages of their growth.

Beyond those leading markets, VTS identifies several emerging AI office hubs where the velocity of the new AI demand entering the market is beginning to accelerate, reinforcing that demand is expanding beyond the industry's largest AI centers while remaining concentrated in specialized clusters. Key findings include:

• Seattle: The fastest-growing AI office market VTS tracks, with demand up 390 percent year-over-year across eight active requirements totaling 315,000 square feet, driven by incoming tenants seeking access to the city's strong AI engineering talent base.
• Northern Virginia: One of the country's fastest-growing secondary AI markets, fueled by defense, government technology and AI infrastructure demand.
• Austin: Continued expansion from established technology companies leveraging the market's strong talent base and lower operating costs.
• Chicago: AI demand is up 45 percent year-over-year, with 308,000 square feet of active demand concentrated in the West Loop and Fulton Market corridor, driven by enterprise adoption across manufacturing, logistics, healthcare and financial services.
• Washington, D.C.: AI accounts for more than 80 percent of active tech demand across several core submarkets, reflecting the region's concentration of defense and government AI work led by firms including Anduril, Shield AI and Palantir.

"Our data shows a wave that's still building, from a sector that sat quiet through 2023," said Ryan Masiello, Chief Strategy Officer of VTS. "AI companies are committing to office space earlier and building real operations backed by the capital, talent and infrastructure to support long-term growth, and that's what makes this demand look much more durable than the demand we saw in 2022."

While the broader office recovery remains uneven, the data suggests AI is already reshaping leasing conditions in select markets and submarkets. In San Francisco, professional services requirement velocity is up 33 percent year-over-year, providing an early indication that broader business demand is beginning to follow AI investment. The findings also reinforce that metro-level office statistics increasingly mask significant variation at the submarket level, where concentrated AI demand is already tightening availability and reshaping leasing conditions.

The full VTS AI Office Demand Report is available HERE.

About VTS

VTS is the only AI-driven technology platform enabling intelligent real estate by unifying industry professionals, investors, and their customers at scale. In 2013, VTS revolutionized commercial real estate leasing operations with what is now VTS Lease. Today, VTS is the largest first-party insights and collaboration engine in the industry, transforming how strategic decisions are made and executed by the real estate industry globally.

With the VTS Platform, consisting of VTS Lease, VTS Market, VTS Activate, and VTS Data, every stakeholder in real estate is given real-time market information and workflow tools to do their job with unparalleled speed and intelligence. VTS is the global leader, with more than 60% of Class A office space in the U.S., and 13 billion square feet of office, residential, retail, and industrial space is managed through the platform worldwide. VTS is utilized by over 45,000 professionals and over 1.2 million total users each day, including industry-leading customers such as Blackstone, Brookfield Properties, LaSalle Investment Management, Hines, BXP, Oxford Properties, JLL, and CBRE.