Tech company keeps up its shopping spree

Fortinet adds Sunnyvale sites to its real estate collection in Bay Area

139 Kifer Court, left, and 130 Kifer Court are two office and research buildings in Sunnyvale that have been purchased by Fortinet, a company that paid $10 million for the buildings as its footprint in the Bay Area expands. Google maps

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By George Avalos

gavalos@bayareanewsgroup.com

SUNNYVALE — Fortinet added two Sunnyvale buildings to its shopping spree of Silicon Valley properties in a purchase that shows the tech industry still hungers for prime South Bay real estate.

According to documents filed on May 30 with the Santa Clara County Recorder’s Office, the Sunnyvale-based tech company paid $10 million for two research and office buildings at 130 and 139 Kifer Court, near its headquarters.

Fortinet bought the properties from R1 RCM through an all-cash deal, according to property records. Cushman & Wakefield, a commercial real estate firm, arranged the transaction.

Both buildings are two stories, and each totals 30,000 square feet, a Cushman & Wakefield marketing brochure shows. The land beneath the two buildings totals a combined three acres.

Fortinet has now spent well over a half-billion dollars to collect an array of properties in the South Bay and East Bay.

Fortinet previously paid $562.9 million to buy primarily nondescript office, research, or industrial buildings in Sunnyvale and Union City, according to this news organization’s review of public real estate documents in recent years.

The company has spent $337.7 million to purchase Sunnyvale real estate in a series of transactions that began in 2012. In January 2024, Texas Instruments sold a 27-acre Sunnyvale campus to Fortinet for $192 million.

In Union City, Fortinet spent $225.2 million to buy properties, Alameda County documents show.

Despite continued cuts by tech companies that have seen well over 43,000 jobs get eliminated in the Bay Area in recent years, multiple firms are still seeking ways to broaden their footprints in the region.

Google, Applied Materials, Intuitive Surgical, Fortinet, and Apple have popped up with purchases of many properties in the South Bay and East Bay.

The property purchases by these and other companies were undertaken to enable the companies to own properties for long-term growth and elbow room, some experts believe.