Artificial intelligence company OpenAI recently celebrated the opening of a new office space in downtown Bellevue. A ribbon-cutting ceremony was held Thursday, March 5, at Bellevue City Center Plaza.
The event included several members of the Bellevue City Council, including Bellevue Mayor Mo Malakoutian.
The new site serves as the company’s engineering office in the city. According to OpenAI, the Bellevue location reflects its expanding footprint in the region. The office currently houses about 250 employees and has the capacity to accommodate up to 1,400 workers as the company grows.
OpenAI presently occupies two floors of the building, with the option to expand into an additional 10 floors in the future.
In remarks welcoming the company to Bellevue, Bob Ferguson highlighted Washington’s role in the technology sector.
“Washington has been a leader in technological innovation, and AI is certainly no different,” Ferguson said. “Our region is very well poised to become a global hub for AI.”
The Bellevue location is now the company’s largest office outside of its headquarters in San Francisco. Teams based in the office work across several areas, including infrastructure, ChatGPT development, research, advertising, and partnerships—an indication of the company’s broader expansion beyond engineering roles.
The interior space is designed to encourage collaboration. A large wood-clad central staircase connects the two current floors, while shared areas—including lounge-style gathering spaces and a library—are intended to support informal meetings and teamwork.
OpenAI first established a presence in Bellevue in 2024 with offices located near Microsoft, one of its key partners. The partnership between the two companies began in 2019 when Microsoft invested $1 billion in OpenAI. A later investment of $10 billion brought Microsoft’s ownership stake to approximately 49 percent. Since then, the companies have collaborated to integrate OpenAI technologies into a variety of Microsoft products.
The company continued its expansion in 2025 by leasing two floors at City Center Plaza, located at 555 110th Avenue Northeast in downtown Bellevue. The space had previously been occupied by Microsoft, which vacated the building in 2024 when its lease ended, leaving more than 500,000 square feet of office space available in the tower.
