Yext Lands in New Manhattan Tower for $150M HQ

Yext Building. Rendering courtesy of Yext

Online brand management startup Yext Inc. has signed a 12-year lease for the entire office portion of the Manhattan office tower at 61 Ninth Ave., where it will shell out $150 million to create its new global headquarters.

Yext will move to the 142,500-square-foot space from its current address at 1 Madison Ave. The company will pay about $1 million per month in rent for the new premises, a spokesperson for Yext confirmed to Commercial Property Executive after the figure was originally reported by Bloomberg. The locally based tech firm plans to spend tens of millions of dollars to redesign the interior of the building, and aims to relocate all its New York City staff there by March 2020.

Developed by Vornado Realty Trust, the nine-floor property on West 15th St. at Ninth Avenue was completed this year. The Rafael Viñoly-designed building is located across the street from Chelsea Market, between Google’s Manhattan headquarters and an Apple store.

The newly leased property in the Chelsea neighborhood will be rebranded as The Yext Building. Aetna had previously planned to occupy the office space until its acquisition by CVS Health Corp.

Yext Eyes Next Moves

Yext currently has 1,000 global employees and expects to hire another 500 over the next five years in New York alone. The company has another dozen offices around the world, including in the Washington, D.C. metro, where it recently inked a 42,500-square-foot lease for the top three floors at 1101 Wilson Blvd.

Yext, which is led by Founder and CEO Howard Lerman, said it planned to hire another 500 people at the Class A office tower.