The Ion, billed as Houston's future innovation hub, has landed another Fortune 100 company as a tenant.
Rice Management Co. announced Dec. 17 that Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT) will lease space on the fifth floor of The Ion, a 288,000-square-foot facility being developed at 4201 Main St. Terms of the lease were not disclosed in the announcement.
Microsoft will occupy about 25,000 square feet, but the company does not disclose headcount by location, a Microsoft spokesperson confirmed.
The Microsoft employees working at The Ion will be "Azure engineers with deep expertise in cloud computing, data/AI, product development, and subject matter experts from the energy industry," Ravi Krishnaswamy, corporate vice president of Azure Global Industry at Microsoft, wrote in a LinkedIn post about the announcement.
"Their primary purpose is to work with customers, partners and startups to support and accelerate the energy industry’s transformation and Microsoft’s commitment to sustainability," Krishnaswamy continued. "We will do this by helping them optimize how they use Azure and its many services, partnering with them to develop new data and AI models and listening to their unique problems and challenges to inform new, industry specific platforms and services."
Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft also is an established partner of The Ion and a founding sponsor of The Ion's Smart and Resilient Cities Accelerator. The tech giant "will play a role in professional and workforce development through support of The Ion's various community and startup initiatives," including hosting advancement opportunities and supporting future accelerators for advanced manufacturing, digital skilling and smart and resilient city innovation, Rice Management Co. said.
Microsoft previously announced it is investing more than $1 million into programs supporting social entrepreneurship and other initiatives at The Ion, the entrepreneurial campus being developed by Rice Management Co. at 4201 Main St. in Midtown. The Ion teamed up with Microsoft to launch the The Ion Smart and Resilient Cities Accelerator in 2019.
In August 2020, Microsoft and the city of Houston expanded their digital skills training partnership with a new program, dubbed Accelerate. The program was designed to provide digital skills training to underserved communities and retraining to Americans impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic.
"The Ion and Microsoft will provide the necessary tools and knowledge needed to become more resilient, strengthen our workforce and create new innovations to accelerate the energy transition," said Jan E. Odegard, interim executive director of The Ion. "We were delighted this summer when we announced Microsoft's sponsorship of The Ion programming and are now even more ecstatic to welcome a division of Microsoft to its new home. My team and I look forward to showcasing our great programs that are enabled by corporate sponsors like Microsoft to the entrepreneurs, academics, corporations and community in Houston and around the world."
The Ion, the redevelopment of the former Sears building in Midtown, will feature rentable coworking space for startups, dedicated office space for corporate partners and larger startups, retail space and more. Initial construction on the building is slated for completion in the first quarter of 2021, at which point tenants will be able to begin building out their own spaces.
Rice Management Co. confirmed that more than half of The Ion's space is now committed to end users.
A leasing brochure from commercial real estate firm Savills shows the fourth and fifth floors each feature roughly 50,000 square feet dedicated to premium office spaces.
Dallas-based Common Desk will operate 58,000 square feet of flexible coworking space on The Ion's second floor. California-based energy giant Chevron Corp. (NYSE: CVX), which was the first tenant to sign a lease this summer, will have an office on The Ion's third floor, which is for enterprise tenants seeking office space of around 5,000 square feet and up.
Both Chevron and Microsoft are among the most elite companies on the Fortune 500 list. Chevron is No. 15 this year, and Microsoft is No. 21.
Shop Architects was the design architect for The Ion, while Gensler serves as architect of record and interior architect. Gilbane is the general contractor for the project.
