Salesforce cut its San Francisco office footprint by 55% since 2019, dropping from 2.2 million square feet to 1.0 million, per Cushman & Wakefield data. The CRM giant fell from #1 to #3 among city tenants, behind Google (1.6M sq ft) and OpenAI (1.2M sq ft). Anthropic sits at #4 with 950K sq ft.
The numbers tell the story: OpenAI and Anthropic combined occupy 2.15M sq ft, more than double Salesforce's current footprint and roughly equal to Salesforce's 2019 peak. Two AI companies that barely existed five years ago now hold more San Francisco office space than the company that defined enterprise SaaS for two decades.
What This Means for Sales Teams
Salesforce's office cuts track with broader workforce reductions. The company announced 10% headcount cuts (approximately 8,000 roles) in January 2025, dropping total employees from 80,000 to around 72,000. While exact sales team numbers are not disclosed, these cuts hit go-to-market functions across enterprise, mid-market, and SMB segments.
Meanwhile, OpenAI and Anthropic are hiring aggressively. Their combined office expansion signals thousands of new roles, many in enterprise sales as both companies push into B2B. OpenAI's enterprise sales team has grown from near-zero to several hundred reps in under three years. Anthropic is building similar GTM capacity.
For sales professionals, the shift is clear: traditional enterprise software companies are optimising (read: cutting), while AI-native companies are scaling fast. The office footprint data is a proxy for where quota-carrying headcount is actually growing.
The Broader Market
Salesforce is not alone. Six of San Francisco's 2019 top 10 office tenants cut footprint by 30% or more: Wells Fargo (down 64%), Uber (down 65%), Meta (down 34%). WeWork, Pinterest, and Airbnb dropped off the list entirely. Google held flat at 1.6M sq ft.
For ANZ sales professionals watching the US market, this matters. Salesforce maintains strong presence in Sydney, Melbourne, and Auckland with an estimated 400-500 employees regionally. If US cuts continue, ANZ teams will feel it through territory changes, quota adjustments, and potential role consolidation. The company recently launched Agentforce, its AI agent platform, positioning AI as the future of CRM sales tools.
The question for reps at mature SaaS companies: are you carrying quota at a company that is growing headcount, or optimising it? The office data suggests which direction the market is moving.