Personalis Leases 100,000 Square Feet in Fremont, CA, Will Move HQ There

 By David Gross

While there’s been a lot of talk about companies leaving the Bay Area, diagnostics manufacturer  is staying in the region, just moving across the Bay.  The company current leases 45,000 square feet in Menlo Park where it had an initial base rent of $61 per square foot, and will be moving to a new 100,000 square foot facility in Fremont where it will pay $45 per foot after a discount expires.

The company is planning a $200 million budget, or $200 fit out of the space, with a landlord TIA (Tenant Improvement Allowance) expected to cover just over 75% of that. 

Located near industrial properties, the area west of I-880 in Fremont generally draws lower rents than areas of the East Bay closer to San Francisco, or anywhere in the peninsula.  However, not needing partnerships to survive like most biotech companies, diagnostics manufacturers have a tendency to spread out from traditional clusters, with 10x Genomics about 15 miles away in Pleasanton, where it recently signed a new lease for just $38 per square foot,  and Bio-Rad up in Hercules in a lower rent area.

While it sells liquid biopsy assays to pharma companies, Personalis reported last quarter that over half of its revenue come from the VA’s Million Veterans Program, for which it has sequenced over 125,000 human genomes.