SUNNYVALE — Walmart has started moving employees into a huge tech hub in Sunnyvale where the retail titan could employ thousands of workers in its digital units in a lift for the South Bay economy.
In 2023, Walmart.com subleased all of a four-building Sunnyvale tech campus, a deal that provided a lift for the South Bay office sector.
Office building on Crossman Avenue, a site that is part of a four-building tech campus known as Moffett Green in northern Sunnyvale. (Walmart)
“This strategic investment underscores the company’s commitment to shaping the future of retail through technology,” Walmart said in a statement the company provided to this news organization.
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Walmart.com has begun moving its tech workers into the first two of the buildings, which together total 719,000 square feet.
“This space is a reflection of everything we believe in,” said Suresh Kumar, Walmart global chief technology officer and chief development officer. “When you invest in people, culture and innovation, great things happen.”
When the third and fourth buildings open up, Walmart will fill them with more workers.
“The first two office buildings will house roughly 2,000 associates initially, with more associates moving in as additional buildings open,” Walmart stated in comments the retailer emailed to this news organization.
An estimated 3,600 people could work in the four buildings, given the square footage and type of office properties at the Sunnyvale tech campus.
The new Walmart tech hub in Sunnyvale is emerging at the same time that Walmart has been trimming jobs in the Bay Area.
Last year, Walmart disclosed plans to slash 568 Bay Area jobs by August 2024.
That downsizing consisted of 388 jobs in San Bruno and another 180 at a Walmart complex on California Avenue near downtown Sunnyvale.
This year, Walmart said it would cut another 77 jobs in San Bruno by June 2025.
Walmart subleased the four Sunnyvale buildings from Facebook app owner Meta Platforms in late 2023.
The office complex is located near the corner of Crossman Avenue and Caribbean Drive in northern Sunnyvale. The property also fronts on East Java Drive.
In 2021, Facebook app owner Meta Platforms leased the entire campus. At the time, the huge rental deal represented a major expansion for the tech titan. Not long after that mega leasing deal, Meta drastically shifted its real estate priorities.
During the worst of the coronavirus outbreak and business shutdowns to combat the spread of the deadly virus, isolated people and workers hungered in a big way for tech products and services so they could work or socialize remotely.
Eventually, however, the easing of work-from-home mandates caused demand to fade for such technology products and services.
The diminished demand, in turn, prodded tech companies to chop jobs worldwide, including in the Bay Area — staffing reductions that also drastically curtailed tech companies’ need for office space. Vacancies rocketed higher as tech company office footprints shrank.
The Walmart expansion in north Sunnyvale offers a hopeful counterpoint to the downbeat trends of tech industry cutbacks.
The addresses of the first two buildings that Walmart is occupying in Sunnyvale are 1345 and 1375 Crossman Avenue, according to the retailer.
“This investment in Sunnyvale strengthens our presence in a global hub of innovation and further accelerates Walmart’s growth into a people-led, tech-powered retailer,” Kumar said.
