Andreessen Horowitz Exits Miami Office In Latest Blow To City's Tech Dreams
Mayor Francis Suarez’s hopes of making Miami the Silicon Valley of the South and the country's cryptocurrency capital have been dealt another setback.
Andreessen Horowitz, one of Silicon Valley’s most high-profile venture capital firms, has shuttered its office in Miami Beach.
The firm, also known as a16z, left its roughly 8,300 SF office at 2340 Collins Ave., a boutique office building that is owned by and hosts the headquarters of Barry Sternlicht’s Starwood Capital Group.
The venture capital firm left the property in May because its South Florida employees weren’t using the space often enough, Bloomberg reported, citing unnamed sources.
A spokesperson for the company told Bloomberg that a16z no longer had a Miami office but declined to comment further. The firm didn’t respond to Bisnow’s request for comment.
California-based a16z manages $7.6B in crypto-related assets, per Bloomberg, and has a 100-person strong staff helping deploy capital in emerging technologies like artificial intelligence and fintech while funding disruptive tech in industries like healthcare and infrastructure.
The firm had signed a five-year lease and opened its office at the Starwood headquarters in July 2022, a move Suarez at the time touted on social media as ”enormous news” for Miami in a post that included a rocket ship emoji.
But Miami’s crypto fortunes have largely failed to materialize, despite Bitcoin doubling in value over the last 12 months. Miami-Dade County winning back the naming rights last January for the Miami Heat arena after the collapse of cryptocurrency exchange FTX was just the most highly publicized in a string of fintech flops over the last few years.
A $546K lawsuit was spawned when Blockchain.com backed out of its lease at Cube Wynwd last March, with Blanca Commercial Real Estate suing landlord Brick & Timber Collective for the commission on the now-dead deal.
Yuga Labs, the Miami-based startup behind the flash-in-the-pan Bored Ape Yacht Club phenomenon, announced in October that it was laying off staff and restructuring the company. Solana Spaces, brick-and-mortar locations in New York and Miami promoting the namesake coin, lasted less than a year, with the two locations closing last February.
MiamiCoin, the city’s own cryptocurrency touted by Suarez, is also effectively dead after it ceased trading on major exchanges in April 2023.
While the hype around blockchain technology has largely faded, Miami’s office market has hardly suffered for it. Tech companies made up only 6% of the year's leasing activity in Miami through July, according to Avison Young, while sector stalwarts finance and legal accounted for 39% of deals.
Bausch + Lomb scooped up the space a16z put up for sublease in a matter of weeks, kept all the furniture and has already moved in, said Brandon Charnas of Current Real Estate Advisors, who helped broker the deal along with Colliers’ brokers Kevin Gonzalez and Stephen Rutchik.
Charnas declined to comment about a16z or its decision to move, but said the deal to bring in Bausch + Lomb was one of the quickest transactions he’d ever been a part of because tenants are clamoring for boutique, high-quality office space in Miami Beach.
The Charnas, Gonzalez and Rutchik team were also involved in the recent 8,415 SF lease at The Well Bay Harbour Islands by TEB Capital Management, Tom Brady’s investment firm.
Class-A asking rates in Miami Beach averaged $83.63 per SF at the end of the second quarter, according to Blanca Commercial Real Estate, the third-highest in the county behind Brickell and Wynwood.
New construction in Miami Beach is winning some of the highest rents in the city, as executives leading small private wealth management offices or investment firms look for premium space near their oceanfront mansions and condos.
New York-based Sumaida + Khurana tapped Pritzker Prize-winner Eduardo Souto de Moura to design its second planned office in the South of Fifth neighborhood. Asking rents at the developer’s first project in the area, another boutique office that’s under construction roughly two blocks away, top $170 per SF.
