Big tech company widens South Bay buying binge with new property deal

SUNNYVALE — A big tech company has added two Sunnyvale buildings to its shopping spree for Silicon Valley properties in a purchase that shows the tech industry still hungers for prime South Bay real estate.

Fortinet has paid $10 million for two research and office buildings in Sunnyvale, according to documents filed on May 30 with the Santa Clara County Recorder’s Office.

With the latest deals, Sunnyvale-based Fortinet has now spent well over a half-billion dollars to collect an array of properties in the South Bay and East Bay.

The just-bought buildings have addresses of 130 and 139 Kifer Court in Sunnyvale, the county documents show.

Fortinet has paid $562.9 million to buy primarily nondescript office, research, or industrial buildings in Sunnyvale and Union City, according to this news organization’s review of public real estate documents in recent years.

Here are some details of Fortinet’s endeavors to wheel and deal in Bay Area real estate.

— In Sunnyvale, Fortinet has spent $337.7 million to purchase real estate in a series of Santa Clara County transactions that began in 2012.

— In Union City, Fortinet has spent $225.2 million to buy properties in recent years, Alameda County documents show.

— The Sunnyvale documents are all near the site of Fortinet’s eye-catching Sunnyvale headquarters at 909 Kifer Road. The company’s new headquarters is located on a site Fortinet bought as part of its push to collect properties in Sunnyvale.

— Fortinet’s largest South Bay deal appears to be its $192 million purchase in January 2024 of a 27-acre Sunnyvale campus that Texas Instruments sold to Fortinet.

As for the recent purchase of the Kifer Court buildings, Fortinet bought the properties through an all-cash deal, according to the property records. Cushman & Wakefield, a commercial real estate firm, arranged the transaction.

R1 RCM is the entity that sold the Kifer Court buildings to Fortinet, the real estate files show.

Both buildings are two stories, and each totals 30,000 square feet, a Cushman & Wakefield marketing brochure shows. The land beneath the two buildings totals a combined three acres.

Despite nearly three years of painful layoffs by tech companies that have eliminated well over 43,000 jobs in the Bay Area, multiple technology firms are still seeking ways to broaden their footprints in the region.

In recent years, Google, Applied Materials, Intuitive Surgical, Fortinet, and Apple have popped up with purchases of many properties in the South Bay and East Bay.

The property purchases by these and other companies were undertaken to enable these tech titans to own properties for long-term growth and elbow room, some experts believe.