How much office space does an AI team need as it grows?

The most common planning mistake we see is picking a square-footage figure first and working backward. A space program should start with people: who you employ today, who you plan to hire, and when. For an AI or software company that usually means a forecast broken out by team, because research, engineering, product, sales and operations use space very differently.

Build the forecast in ranges. A board-approved hiring plan is a useful input, but it is not a guarantee, and funding timing can move it in either direction. We ask clients for a conservative case, an expected case and a stretch case for each year of the likely lease term. The gap between the conservative and stretch cases is what your lease structure has to absorb.

• Current headcount by team, including contractors who sit on site.
• Planned hires by quarter for the next 12 months and by year after that.
• Roles that are fully remote and will never need a desk.
• Teams that need dedicated rooms, such as a hardware bench, a secure area or a recording room.
• Any acquisition or new-office plans that could change the picture.

A hybrid policy on paper and the way people actually come in are often different. If your team is already hybrid, look at badge data, desk-booking records or even a few weeks of simple counts before you commit to a ratio of desks to people. The number that matters is your peak day, not your average. Many teams cluster on the same anchor days, and an office sized for the average will feel full on Tuesday and empty on Friday.

Be honest about where the policy is heading. If leadership expects to ask people back more often as the company grows, plan for that now. Leasing too little space and then scrambling for more mid-term is usually more expensive than negotiating the right to grow into it.

Size desks for your busiest regular day, then decide whether overflow is handled with bookable desks, flexible neighborhoods or a coworking membership, rather than guessing at an average.

AI and software teams tend to swing between deep, heads-down work and intense group sessions such as model reviews, whiteboarding and sprint planning. A layout that only supports one of those modes frustrates people quickly. When you list requirements, separate the space into a few categories and estimate how many of each you need, based on how your teams really meet.

• Focus space: assigned or bookable desks, quiet zones and phone booths for people on calls.
• Collaboration space: small huddle rooms, project rooms that can stay set up for a week, and a few larger meeting rooms with good video.
• Social and all-hands space: a kitchen or open area that can hold the whole company for demos and announcements.
• Technical space: an IDF or server closet, a secure storage room, or a hardware bench if you have one. Power, cooling and connectivity for those rooms deserve their own questions to the landlord.

Video meetings deserve special attention. Hybrid teams spend a lot of time on calls, and a shortage of small rooms and booths pushes people into taking calls at open desks, which undermines the focus space you just planned.

Once you have a headcount range, you have to decide how much of it to lease on day one. Leasing for the stretch case means paying for empty desks, possibly for years. Leasing only for today means you may outgrow the space before the lease ends. The answer is usually somewhere in between, combined with lease rights that let you adjust.

• Phasing: lease an initial block with a defined option to take additional space later, on terms agreed now.
• Expansion rights: a right of first offer or refusal on adjacent space, or a must-take schedule you control.
• Contraction or early termination options, if the forecast turns out to be too optimistic.
• Sublease and assignment rights that let you recover cost if you need to move or shrink.
• Term length that fits how far ahead you can realistically forecast.

Landlords do not give these rights away automatically, and each one can come with a cost. How much you can secure depends on the building, the market and the rest of the deal, which is why it helps to know your growth range before you start negotiating. We cover these clauses in more detail in our guide to lease terms for fast-growing AI companies.

A clear brief saves weeks. One approach we have seen work well is to sort every requirement into three tiers: must-have, want and nice-to-have. Must-haves rule a space in or out. Wants separate good options from average ones. Nice-to-haves break ties. When OAO, an ad operations services company, moved its Chicago office out of a shared office, its technology leader described the brief this way:

For an AI or tech company, a useful brief usually answers the questions below. You do not need every answer on day one, but the more you settle up front, the faster your broker can narrow the market.

• ✓What is our headcount range for each year of the likely lease term?
• ✓How many people are in the office on our busiest regular day?
• ✓Which locations work for commuting, recruiting and client visits, and which are ruled out?
• ✓How many focus seats, meeting rooms, phone booths and technical rooms do we need?
• ✓Do we have power, cooling or connectivity needs beyond a standard office?
• ✓Would we accept a sublease or spec suite, or do we need a direct lease and a custom build-out?
• ✓What is our target move-in window, and what happens if we miss it?
• ✓Who inside the company signs off on the budget, the layout and the lease?

Helping clients turn that brief into a space program and a search is a core part of our tenant representation work for technology companies.

Before you commit, test the plan against the space you are actually considering. A test fit from an architect shows whether your desks, rooms and technical spaces fit the floor plate, and it often reveals that two spaces with the same square footage hold very different numbers of people.

1. Ask for a test fit of your program in each finalist space.
2. Check the layout against your peak-day headcount, not just total headcount.
3. Confirm where expansion space would come from and on what terms.
4. Model the cost of the space under your conservative and stretch hiring cases.
5. Have your attorney review expansion, contraction and sublease language before signing.

A plan that holds up under both a slower and a faster hiring year is one you can sign with confidence.