Resource center
Commercial Real Estate Guides for AI & Tech Companies
Plain-English guides to leasing, expanding and planning space for teams that grow faster than their leases.
Space decisions move as fast as your roadmap
AI and technology companies hire in bursts, raise capital in rounds and sometimes change direction mid-lease. The standard office lease was not written for that. These guides are organized by where you are: learning the basics, comparing options and terms, or choosing a broker and closing a deal.
Looking for general lease terms, such as triple net, CAM or tenant improvement allowances? See the Commercial Leasing Resource Center.
Start here
The basics, in plain English
New to commercial leasing? These guides explain how it works before you talk to anyone.
Getting started
Do AI Companies Still Need an Office?
An office is a tool, not a default. Here is what it actually does for an AI team, and when you can do without one.
Read the guide →When Should a Startup Leave Coworking for Its Own Office?
Coworking is a good place to start and a poor place to stay too long. These are the signals that tell you which side of the line you are on.
Read the guide →Your First Office Lease: What Founders Should Know
A commercial lease is nothing like renting an apartment. These are the ten things first-time tenants most often learn too late.
Read the guide →What Should You Do About Office Space After a Funding Round?
New capital changes what you need, what landlords will offer and how fast you have to move. It does not change the risk of leasing for a forecast.
Read the guide →How Much Office Space Does a Startup Need?
A square-foot-per-person rule answers the wrong question. A startup needs to size for a moving target it can afford to miss.
Read the guide →How to Choose a Coworking Space for a Startup
Most coworking spaces look good on a tour. The differences that matter show up on a busy Tuesday and in the membership agreement.
Read the guide →Office Space for Startups: What to Look For
A first office is less about finding a nice room and more about matching a commitment to what you actually know about the next few years.
Read the guide →Lease basics explained
AI teams and space
Office, Colocation or Cloud: Where Does AI Compute Belong?
Most AI companies need two kinds of space, one for people and one for machines, and they are rarely the same building.
Read the guide →How Is a Data Center Lease Different From an Office Lease?
Both are contracts for space, but they price, promise and protect very different things.
Read the guide →Can You Run GPU Servers in an Office?
A small amount of GPU hardware is often workable in an office. The limits arrive sooner than most teams expect, and the lease has a say.
Read the guide →Remote, Hybrid or In-Office: What It Means for Your Lease
The work model is a people decision first, but it sets the size, layout, term and location of the lease that follows.
Read the guide →What Makes an Office Building Tech-Ready?
Tech-ready is a marketing phrase until you test it. Six things separate a building that supports a technical team from one that only says it does.
Read the guide →Do AI Research Teams and Product Teams Need Different Space?
The two groups share a company and often a floor, but they use space differently enough that one uniform layout tends to fail both.
Read the guide →Should an AI Company Open a Satellite Office?
A second location can widen the hiring pool and bring you closer to customers, but it works best when it starts small and earns its expansion.
Read the guide →What Is in a Data Center Lease?
A plain-language tour of the main sections in a data center agreement, for people who have never read one.
Read the guide →Compare and plan
Weighing options, clauses and buildings
For teams actively comparing spaces and terms: the trade-offs, the clauses and what to check in a building.
Comparing your options
Sublease, Coworking, Spec Suite or Direct Lease for an AI Startup?
Each option trades flexibility, control and cost differently, and the right one changes as an AI startup grows.
Read the guide →Office, Flex, Lab or Industrial Space for AI Hardware and Robotics?
The right property type depends on what your team physically builds, tests and ships, not on the word "AI" in your pitch deck.
Read the guide →Should a Tech Company Lease or Buy Its Office?
Owning gives control and a real estate stake. Leasing keeps capital and options free. Which matters more depends on how settled your company is.
Read the guide →Downtown or Suburban Office for a Tech Team?
The right location is the one your current and future employees can reach, at a cost structure you have compared fairly.
Read the guide →Colocation Contract Terms to Negotiate
A working list for the people on your side of the table, with what to ask under each term and why it matters.
Read the guide →Coworking Agreements: What Founders Should Read First
A coworking agreement can look like a simple signup form. It often gives the operator far more room to change things than a lease gives a landlord.
Read the guide →Lab Space for Tech and Hardware Startups
A room with benches is not necessarily a lab. The work has to be allowed, the building has to support it, and the approvals have to line up.
Read the guide →Renting Data Center Space: Colocation vs Wholesale
Three ways of renting data center space, and a method for working out which one your power need and team can support.
Read the guide →Robotics Lab and Test Space: What to Look For
Robots ask more of a building than laptops do. The checks below translate what your engineers need into questions a landlord can answer.
Read the guide →Lease clauses, one at a time
Which Office Lease Terms Matter Most for a Fast-Growing AI Company?
Your headcount plan will change before your lease does. These are the clauses that let an AI company grow, shrink, raise, or sell without being trapped by its office.
Read the guide →What Happens to Your Lease If Your Company Is Acquired?
A sale or merger can require your landlord's approval unless the lease says otherwise. The fix is negotiated years before the deal.
Read the guide →Use Clauses, 24/7 Access and Building Hours for Tech Tenants
Being allowed into the building at midnight is not the same as having air conditioning, elevators or permission for what you are doing there.
Read the guide →Checking the building
Power, Cooling and Connectivity: What AI Teams Should Ask a Landlord
The infrastructure questions to settle before you sign, not after your first GPU workstation trips a breaker.
Read the guide →How to Evaluate a Building’s Electrical Capacity
A leasing flyer will say the building has "ample power." The documents that prove it are a different set, and someone qualified has to read them.
Read the guide →Supplemental Cooling and After-Hours HVAC: Who Pays?
Cooling people in the evening and cooling equipment around the clock are two different problems with two different bills.
Read the guide →Fiber, Carriers and Internet Redundancy in an Office Building
Two internet bills do not equal two connections if both run through the same conduit under the same sidewalk.
Read the guide →Server Rooms and IT Closets: What to Put in the Lease
It is the smallest room on the floor plan and the one that touches the most lease clauses.
Read the guide →Physical Security and Access Control for AI Companies
Your security policy describes who can reach your systems. The lease decides whether the building lets you enforce it.
Read the guide →Floor Loading, Freight Elevators and Docks for Hardware Teams
Before asking whether a machine fits in the room, ask whether the floor can hold it and whether it can get there at all.
Read the guide →Backup Power: Generator and UPS Rights in a Lease
When the power goes out, the exit signs stay lit. Whether your equipment does depends on rights you negotiated before you moved in.
Read the guide →Planning and budgeting
Security Deposits, Letters of Credit and Guarantees for Startups
How to size, structure and shrink the credit support a landlord asks of a company that is growing fast but not yet profitable.
Read the guide →How much office space does an AI team need as it grows?
A practical way to turn a hiring plan, a hybrid policy and the way your team actually works into a space program you can take to market.
Read the guide →How Should a Startup Present Its Financials to a Landlord?
How to assemble a credit package a landlord can underwrite, what to keep confidential, and how the way you present affects the security you are asked to post.
Read the guide →A Real Estate Plan by Stage: Seed, Series A, Series B and Beyond
A pattern-based view of how office commitments tend to grow with a company, and how to tell when your situation calls for something different.
Read the guide →Choose and act
Picking a broker and getting the deal done
Ready to move? How to choose representation, run the process and sign with confidence.
Choosing a broker
How Should an AI Company Choose a Commercial Real Estate Broker?
The broker you hire shapes every term in your lease. Here is how AI and technology companies can tell a true tenant advocate from a landlord agent with a tech pitch.
Read the guide →How does tenant representation work for tech companies nationwide?
What a tenant representation broker actually does, step by step, and how the process scales when a technology company leases space in more than one city.
Read the guide →How Tenant Advisory Group Works With AI and Technology Companies
A plain account of who we are, how an engagement runs, where our experience actually lies, and where we send you to other specialists.
Read the guide →Getting the deal done
Opening a Chicago Office for an AI or Tech Company
A practical guide to choosing a neighborhood and a building in Chicago, written for a company that may be running the search from another city.
Read the guide →Office Move Checklist for Tech Companies
For a technology company the move is mostly an IT project with furniture attached. This checklist is ordered by when each task has to start.
Read the guide →Questions
About this resource center
Who is this resource center for?
Founders, COOs, heads of operations and finance leads at AI and technology companies who are leasing, renewing, expanding or buying commercial space, whether in Chicago or in another U.S. market.
Where should I start?
If this is your first commercial lease, begin with the "Start here" guides. If you are already touring or comparing proposals, go to "Compare and plan". If you are choosing a broker or about to sign, go to "Choose and act".
Does Tenant Advisory Group work with AI companies?
Yes. We represent AI and technology companies as tenants and buyers of office, flex and industrial space. Our track record includes software, data and technology firms such as 8th Light, Label Insight, OAO and BridgePoint Technologies, whose own accounts are published on our testimonials page.
What does it cost to work with a tenant representative?
In a standard commercial lease the landlord pays the brokerage commission, so tenants typically engage TAG at no direct cost.
Need space for an AI or tech team?
Chicago-based, working nationally. Tell us what you need and we’ll bring you options and negotiate the terms.