Databricks just locked down 160,000 square feet at the Four106 tower in downtown Bellevue, bringing its Puget Sound footprint to 270,000 square feet.

The San Francisco-based AI and data company already occupied 110,000 square feet at Lincoln Square South.

The deal is the latest in a string of Bay Area tech firms planting flags on the Eastside rather than across Lake Washington. OpenAI's Bellevue footprint has grown to roughly 296,000 square feet with room for more than 1,000 employees, according to the Bellevue Chamber. Elon Musk's xAI took over the former Epic Games space downtown. Uber signed for approximately 170,000 square feet at the same Four106 tower in April. Snowflake chose Bellevue over downtown Seattle in June 2025, taking 326,000 square feet in a glass tower with mountain views.

The tax gap is a big reason why.

Seattle's business and occupation tax runs 0.342% to 0.658% depending on industry. Bellevue's is 0.1596%. Seattle's JumpStart payroll tax adds $1,450 to $9,390 per job in 2026. Bellevue has no equivalent. A June 2026 Downtown Seattle Association report found that Seattle will collect a projected $410 million in JumpStart revenue alone this year, plus $80 million in additional B&O taxes and $115 million from its Social Housing Tax.

"Bellevue just hasn't increased taxes over the last 10 or 15 years, and our neighbors have been the ones that have really increased the taxes," said Kevin Wallace, a Bellevue developer and former city councilmember.

The numbers back him up. Jobs in downtown Bellevue grew 12.6% between 2023 and 2025, per the DSA report. Seattle lost 1.3% over the same period. Downtown Bellevue's office vacancy stood at 24% in 2025; downtown Seattle hit 35.6% in the fourth quarter of 2025, per Cushman & Wakefield.

Transit is reinforcing the pull. Sound Transit's 2 Line extension opened Saturday, March 28, connecting Bellevue to Seattle via what the agency calls the world's first light rail over a floating bridge. The roughly 20-minute ride from South Bellevue to downtown Seattle means companies can tap talent on both sides of the lake. King County Councilmember Claudia Balducci noted that 10,000 riders a day were already using the Bellevue-to-Redmond segment before the full line opened.

More office space is coming. The proposed Kanon project would add twin 15-story towers with 642,000 square feet of Class A space, and a separate four-tower, 1-million-square-foot project has been proposed at 112th and Main.

Jon Scholes, president and CEO of the Downtown Seattle Association, acknowledged the competitive gap: "They're growing jobs and Seattle's losing jobs. The big difference is the cost of doing business here relative to Bellevue is much more expensive."

The lease was announced Monday, June 22. A move-in timeline has not been disclosed on the date this article was published.