Snap, the parent company of social media instant messaging app Snapchat, is closing its only downtown San Francisco office space, according to multiple reports.
The 33,000 square-foot space at 875 Howard Street is the only Snapchat office space in the city.
The companv, which has struggled through layoffs, restructuring and an industrywide dip in advertising dollars over 2022, says the closure comes as part of a shift toward remote work.
“Our San Francisco location was lightly used by team members following our move to flexible work,” the company told Bloomberg on Friday.
Founded in 2010 by Stanford classmates Evan Spiegel, Bobby Murphy and Reggie Brown, the Santa Monica-based company revolutionized instant messaging by being one of the first to incorporate augmented filters to instant, temporary photo and video messages. The platform has an estimated 363 million global daily active users.
This year has seen dwindling profits at the company, that went public with a valuation of $24 billion in 2017. In August, Spiegel announced cuts of around 20% of Snap’s workforce, laying off over 1,200 employees. Last week, a third-quarter earning report revealed the company’s slowest ever quarterly growth, with its net loss surging 400% to $360 million. This resulted in a 25% plunge in share price to $7.38 a share on Thursday. It’s since pulled back a fraction of that to around $8.30 Monday.
It’s unclear exactly how many employees were working at the Howard Street office, that opened in 2017. A Snap spokesperson told Business Insider, who first reported the news, that the office “was used consistently by only a handful of team members following our move to flexible work.” They added that the company still has office space in Palo Alto.
The closure comes as a blow to a city struggling to comeback from pandemic-era office vacancies. A new study revealed that San Francisco has 27.1 million square feet of office space available right now, a record high.
