In the tech world, Austin is the place to be.
As a sign of the city’s tech might, big companies like Oracle and Tesla have relocated here, while other companies have established a hub office to tap into the local talent market. At the same time, homegrown startups have also prospered in the thriving ecosystem sometimes known as Silicon Hills.
Built In Austin rounded up eight of the companies that have established physical offices in Austin this year, despite the uncertainty created by the pandemic. It’s an impressive list with some big names – and it doesn’t even include any of the 11 companies that moved their headquarters to Austin this year.
Airtable, a San Francisco-based cloud collaboration startup, opened a downtown Austin office at 501 Congress Ave., in a space previously occupied by Dropbox. More than 100 Airtable employees work in Austin, and the company plans to hire another 50 employees to respond to increased demand from enterprise clients.
Shippo, a San Francisco-based shipping logistics startup, opened a 6,700-square-foot office in a former auto repair shop at 1408 E. 13th St., on the east side of Austin. The office currently has 40 employees, but office leadership expects the Austin workforce to reach 100 employees in the next year.
AlertMedia, an Austin-based startup that developed emergency communications software for employers, announced in October that it would be opening a new office in the spring of 2022 in the top two floors of RiverSouth, a new 15-story office building at 401 S. 1st St. The new 70,000-square-foot workspace is more than double the footprint of its previous office space, to meet surging demand for its platform.
Wayfair, a Boston and Berlin-based furniture retailer, announced in April that it would open an engineering office in Austin within the next year. The company said it would hire up to 200 engineers, data scientists, analysts, product managers and designers at the new office.
Navan, a Palo Alto-based booking management startup, announced in April that it would open a sales office in Austin. The Austin team has already doubled from 25 to 50 employees, and the company expects the team to double to 100 over the next year.
Hypergiant, an Austin-based startup that developed an AI platform for businesses, announced in May that it would be opening a new office by September.
Cloudflare, a San Francisco-based internet security company, opened a 125,000-square-foot Austin office in August. The company said at the time that it was actively hiring 170 people for its Austin team, which would bring the local workforce to nearly 530 people.
Miro, a San Francisco-based developer of a workplace collaboration tool, announced in November that it would lease 72,000 square feet of office space in Colorado Tower, making Austin the company’s largest U.S. hub and the second largest of 11 hubs globally. The company occupies floors 17, 18 and 19 of the 30-level high-rise at 303 Colorado St., in the heart of Austin’s Historic Warehouse District.
