OpenAI has shared more details on who and what will occupy its new 14,500-square-foot office at The Gallup Building in Penn Quarter.
Chan Park, head of global affairs for the ChatGPT maker and the D.C. office lead, said the AI giant will soon move from a WeWork location into its new office at 901 F St. NW.
“I joined OpenAI two and a half or three years ago when it was just a handful of us here in D.C.,” Park said during the Washington D.C. Economic Partnership’s annual luncheon at the Grand Hyatt Washington on Thursday. “We’re now really growing.”
“One of the things that we think about here in D.C. is how to make sure AI is part of the overall infrastructure,” he said. “Doing AI in tech here in D.C. as a broader infrastructure, not so much targeted with specific sectors.”
The 60,000-square-foot lease at BXP’s 2200 Pennsylvania Ave. NW was signed during the first quarter, according to a quarterly report from CBRE about D.C.’s office market.
The team, which is planning a $3.8 billion stadium on the 174-acre RFK campus to open in 2030 followed by a broader program of mixed uses, had agreed with the city to relocate senior leadership and sales offices to the District as part of the stadium deal.
Rivet Industries Inc., a Georgetown technology company developing products for the defense and industrial sectors, has secured more than $57.5 million in new capital, according to a recent Securities and Exchange Commission filing.
If D.C. entrepreneur Varun Sivaram was having any doubts about whether his business idea to manage data center energy needs would ever succeed, they were quickly erased by a conversation he had with a top executive at Nvidia Corp. 18 months ago.
“If you did this, it could be a rocket ship,” Sivaram said Vladimir Troy, Nvidia’s vice president of AI infrastructure, told him that October day as they were discussing the framework for what would become Emerald AI. “I don’t know if I would have founded Emerald if not for that initial encouragement from a senior executive at Nvidia.”
Troy’s support went much beyond words. The AI chipmaking giant, the world’s most valuable public company with a market capitalization of $4.2 trillion, has since backed D.C.-based Emerald AI with funding on three occasions.
Trophy rents on signed office leases in D.C. rose 9.3% over the 12 months ending March 31, according to CBRE’s first-quarter market data. That is on top of a 9.1% increase over the prior year.
The CBRE report categorizes this trend as “outpacing the long-term average growth rate” for the trophy segment.
Because trophy rents are reaching record levels, they are also pushing up rents on the tier just below. “Higher-quality or recently renovated” Class-A buildings have recorded a 5%-plus rent growth, CBRE’s report says, “as tenant demand spills over from the Prime segment.”
The Trump administration on Friday proposed creating a $10 billion fund to pay for construction and beautification projects in the nation’s capital, a huge economic boost to the District of Columbia if approved.
The fund would establish the Presidential Capital Stewardship Program within the National Park Service to “coordinate, plan, and execute targeted, priority construction and beautification projects in and around Washington, D.C.,” according to the Office of Management and Budget’s fiscal 2027 budget proposal.
“Once complete, these projects would improve safety and accessibility, rehabilitate historic buildings and landscapes, and enhance architectural grandeur so that Americans can once again be proud of the Nation’s capital,” the proposal states. “In addition, this generational investment in the restoration of Washington, D.C., would drive economic development in the city, increase visitation from across the world, and lower future infrastructure lifecycle costs,” the proposal states.