Alibaba May Prefer Seattle Rather Than San Francisco For Its U.S. Headquarters
SAN FRANCISCO (CBS SF) – Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., the world's largest e-commerce company, is said to favor Seattle for its U.S. headquarters.
Sources tell the Puget Sound Business Journal, the Chinese e-commerce company may prefer Seattle to the Bay Area because they would pay significantly less rent than in San Francisco. The company could also recruit talent from other similar companies in Seattle, which is home to competitor Amazon.
Why Alibaba may snub San Francisco for its U.S. headquarters http://t.co/c08ghVntTG pic.twitter.com/68eSxbmUWr
— San Francisco Business Times (@SFBusinessTimes) April 1, 2015
An Alibaba spokesperson and the company's local real estate broker in Washington state would not comment.
Alibaba already has a development office in downtown Seattle and has already lured employees away from Amazon and Microsoft.
The company has opened a cloud computing arm in Silicon Valley and an investment arm in San Francisco's Financial District.