Anthropic, the San Francisco-based artificial intelligence company behind the AI chatbot Claude, just put down some major roots in Seattle before going public.
Anthropic confirmed Thursday that it signed a lease for a 113,000-square-foot space in the Dexter Yard complex. The company will take up nearly a third of the commercial campus at 700 Dexter Ave N along South Lake Union’s tech row, where Amazon built its campus.
The company already had a small presence in the Dexter Yard complex, taking up around 56,000 square feet in a separate, short-term lease.
An Anthropic spokesperson confirmed the lease but declined to comment further.
The lease terms aren’t public, but the commercial real estate analytics company CoStar says the lease represents Seattle’s largest office deal so far this year.
The enormous lease offers a glimmer of hope for the city’s suffering office market. With a 28% vacancy rate in the first quarter of 2026, Seattle has the highest vacancy rate in the Puget Sound office market, which as a whole has been struggling to fill empty spaces since the rise of remote work, according to Kidder Mathews’ most recent Seattle office market report.
However, rising vacancy rates have slowed over the last year or so, suggesting a potential rebound as the rise of AI drives renewed interest in Seattle’s tech-dominated corridor.
BioMed Realty finished developing Dexter Yard in 2022. In a statement, the company’s president of West Coast markets, Jon Bergschneider, said Seattle has since emerged as one of the world’s leading AI hubs, offering access to a strong tech ecosystem and highly skilled workforce.
“We believe South Lake Union is uniquely positioned to support the next generation of AI and technology companies shaping the future of innovation,” he said.
Anthropic, valued at $900 billion, has recently secured other major leases in tech hubs across the globe as it plans to go public, possibly within a year.
Correction: Kidder Mathews was misspelled in an earlier version of this story.