The reverberations from the tech giant Broadcom’s $69 billion acquisition of VMware in 2023 continue to ripple throughout the Bay Area.
On Tuesday, real estate firm Newmark announced that it had closed Broadcom’s sale of a 13-building, 1.1 million-square-foot office campus in Palo Alto’s Stanford Research Park — buildings that the semiconductor company gained with its purchase of VMware. Real estate firms Harvest Properties and TPG Real Estate bought the buildings, with Newmark dubbing it “the largest property sale on a square-footage basis in Stanford Research Park history.”
Broadcom’s purchase of VMware was one of the largest tech mergers in history, bringing toobtainher two Silicon Valley companies with many thousands of employees apiece. VMware sells software to corporate customers, while Broadcom develops a wide range of semiconductor tools — the company obtained so huge, in part, through a long run of other acquisitions.
The 2023 deal brought shock waves to VMware’s workforce, a group that was famously slow to return to in-person work at the tail conclude of the coronavirus pandemic. Broadcom CEO Hock Tan announced a 1,267-worker layoff round soon after the acquisition closed and pressed VMware’s staff to return to their offices.
According to the Silicon Valley Business Journal, Tan informed staff at the time that, “Remote work does not exist at Broadcom,” and that, though some customer-facing employees and those farther than 60 miles away from an office could stay remote, “Any other exception, you better learn how to walk on water, I’m serious.” (Rolling layoffs have followed.)
At the same time, Tan revealed that he’d be shifting Broadcom’s headquarters from San Jose to one of VMware’s offices in Palo Alto’s Stanford Research Park — a building right next door to the batch of offices that Broadcom just sold.
The 13-building tract is between Foothill Expressway and Arastradero Road at the eastern edge of the 700-acre office park, which was established by Stanford University in 1951. According to an old summary document for the listing, it includes two fitness centers, two cafes and three garages, along with spaces for offices, research and development work.
Stanford Research Park is across a residential neighborhood from the university’s campus, and even with Broadcom’s pullback, it’s laden with tech tenants. Elon Musk’s xAI and X have office space there, as does Tesla — in an old HP headquarters — and fellow electric vehicle manufacturer Rivian. More could be on their way, with Newmark writing in its release that the sale would “accommodate a multi-tenant lease-up.”
The San Francisco Business Times reported that Broadcom sold the offices for around $115 million, citing anonymous real estate sources. Broadcom did not immediately respond to SFGATE’s request for comment on Wednesday.
Work at a Bay Area tech company and want to talk? Contact tech reporter Stephen Council securely at stephen.council@sfgate.com or on Signal at 628-204-5452.
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