Austin's Office Market Just Posted Its Best Quarter in Years

Austin's office market recorded 1.1 million sq ft of positive net absorption in Q1 2026, a sharp reversal from last quarter's loss. But pull the curtain back and the story is simpler: one deal did all the work.

SB Energy (a SoftBank company that just partnered with OpenAI as part of Stargate) bought the former 1.2M sq ft 3M campus on River Place Blvd from Karlin Real Estate. Strip that one transaction out, and Austin office absorption would have stayed negative. The deal alone pushed the overall vacancy rate down 130 basis points to 23.3%.

The other notable move-ins tell the same story:

• IBM, 320,000 sq ft of sublet space at Domain 12
• NVIDIA, 99,000 sq ft at One Uptown
• NXP Semiconductors, 121K + 104K sq ft at Champion Office Park (Northwest)
• Procare Technologies, 34,000 sq ft at 221 W 6th (CBD)

Notice the pattern? AI infrastructure, semiconductors, and enterprise-scale legacy tech.