Crystal City near Washington was reported a few days ago by Bezos’ Washington Post as the choice for Amazon’s HQ2; only after 2 days, medias reported that it’s going to be split into two cities.
While the result will be announced soon, I think it is worth to review tech firms’ real estate moves by looking at Facebook, Google, etc. This post will focus on Facebook.
Facebook’s original office (since 2004) was in downtown Palo Alto on Emerson Street. It had 5 or 6 offices, one conference room, and a large common area.
Source: Daily Mail, NY Times, Redux, eyevineSource: Business Insider
The following expansion in Palo Alto including leases on S. California Avenue and 1050 Page Mill Road.
Facebook moved to Menlo Park in 2011, the old campus of Sun (acquired by Oracle) – an 11 building, 57 acre, 1 million square foot property on the Bayfront Expressway. The purchase was a sale-leaseback with a 15 year long-term lease, with an option to purchase the campus after five years. There were no tax breaks included in the deal with Menlo Park. Facebook has also bought a 22 acre building connected to the campus by a tunnel. It was rumored that Facebook had been considering a leaseback of the property, with the purchase being assigned to a state pension fund. A 15 year leaseback was confirmed today, with the option to buy after 5 years. [TechCrunch]
Source: e-Discovery Team
Besides the move in Silicon Valley, in December 2010, it leased two floors with up to 150,000 square feet at 335 Madison Avenue in New York City, accommodating up to 600 people. It began construction on a $450 million data center in Forest City, North Carolina in 2010 after the first one announced earlier that year in Prineville, Oregon. Facebook also announced a 500-person office in Hyderabad, India, as the first office in mainland Asia, investing up to $150 million to the 50,000 square foot facility.
The number of employees start to explode since 2010.
In a 2013 report, FB has the project, called Anton Menlo, cost an estimated $120 million. It will sprawl over 10 acres of land off Highway 101 in Menlo Park, California. The 630,000 square-foot Facebook town will be walking and biking distance to Facebook’s headquarters. There will be 35 studios, 208 one-bedroom apartments, 139 two-bedroom apartments, and for top Facebook employees, there will be 12 three-bedroom apartments. [Business Insider]
Source: Business InsiderSource: Business Insider
In 2015, FB acquired a 56-acre industrial park immediately south of its current Menlo Park headquarters. The purchase of Prologis Inc.’s 21-building Menlo Science & Technology Park — which industry sources pegged at roughly $400 million. [Silicon Valley Business Journal]
In 2016, Facebook goes from rent to own in Menlo Park in $202 million deal.
Source: Silicon Valley Business Journal
During 2017-2018, FB has opened offices and hired at a blistering pace, with enormous new leases in Sunnyvale, Mountain View and Fremont. This month, Facebook leased all the office space in San Francisco’s new 43-story Park Tower, vaulting it into the ranks of the largest tech tenants in San Francisco. Instagram, a major Facebook subsidiary, recently moved 200 employees into another San Francisco office tower. [San Francisco Chronicle]
In June 2018 reports, Facebook has leased an additional 754,000 square feet for offices in Fremont.
In 2017, FB said it will two more Prineville data centers, followed up by a report of $750 million in Sep. 2018, bringing total investments to $2 billion and total footprint to 3.2 million sqft. The expansion will take nearly two years and employ 1,500 construction workers at peak.
Facebook Data Center in Prineville, August 14, 2015 | Source: Thomas Boyd, oregonlive.com
CIIE 2018 is actually the first of its kind so itself doesn’t have a rich “history” to tell. But there are two other exhibits in China worth noting – 1. Canton Fair (广交会) in Guangdong & 2. Expo 2010 (2010 世博会) in Shanghai
Canton Fair was first held in 1957 Spring and has two sessions (spring session & autumn session) a year (62 years and 124 sessions so far) . Its official name was Chinese Export Commodities Fair, which highlights its origin and main function – exports. Its name was changed after the 100th session and has been China Import and Export Fair since then.
World Expo (or World’s fair, International Exposition, etc.), held every 5 years, is more of a showcase than an purposeful event. China won the bid to host Expo 2010 in 2002, one year after it won the 2008 Summer Olympic Games in 2001. CIIE is held in Shanghai.
What did Xi Say
I watched live keynote and took the following notes –
Part I – welcome & intro
President Xi welcomed the guests, briefly introduced the CIIE and highlighted that CIIE is the “first expo with import theme on a nation’s level”
Part II – importance of a global economy
President Xi used “irresistible trends” according to history to describe the inevitable future of openness, collaborations and global trades/economy. President Xi mentioned “the better world” several times
President Xi suggested three points using “every country” as subject
be open and open more room for collaboration
push for technology & science advancements, as the driver for human’s growth, also highlighting the word “together”
be more inclusive and let every country make progress; reduce inequalities globally
Part III – what China did and will do
China has made significant progress due to reform and opening, and will continue to do so on a greater scale
China will do the following
Increase import proactively: support the consumption upgrade; lower the tariffs; host CIIE annually
Lift limits on foreign investments in certain industries: finance & services (opening accordingly), agricultural & mining & manufacturing (deeper openness), telecom & education & healthcare & culture (accelerate); especially in education and healthcare, foreign ownership percentage will increase. In the future 15 years, good imported might exceed $30 trillion, services imported might exceed $10 trillion
Make business environment better: a combination of “pre-establishment national treatment” and “negative list” will be used; protection on IP is highlighted; an interesting “torchlight” metaphor also mentioned here – President Xi said every country should improve their business environment.
Pilot area on the next level: Hainan is highlighted here
Push for multilateral and bilateral collaborations: WTO reform is mentioned here; several regional collaboration framework is mentioned here
Part IV – be confident in China’s growth potential
President Xi mentioned a few numbers to support the argument that China is making solid progress this year
President Xi also talked about the difficulties/dilemma which should naturally occur as things always have two sides; but be confident about China’s economy, its resilience, strength and growth
Part V – Shanghai is great and has its unique positions
President Xi announced three decisions about Shanghai
expand free trade pilot zone
establish a market for tech/innovation in Shanghai Stock Exchange (科创板), supporting Shanghai’s financial role and tech/innovation center
make integrated Yangtze River Delta region a national level strategy
Part VI – closing
Takwaways
Shanghai’s role reinforced.
The center of import will shift from Guangdong to Shanghai. Export center might still remain in Canton Fair.
Domestic financial center strengthened; global financial firms (mostly have already had presence in HK and Beijing) should expand and locate in Shanghai (especially for the new board on SSE).
SSE will be part of the overall push to let tech companies IPO in domestic market (aimed to compete with SZSE, HKEX, Nasdaq); but this kind of effort has been made several times – ChiNext on SZSE, NEEQ (new three board), etc.. really need a series of efforts/reforms to vitalize the market
Currently major startups/tech companies are in Beijing or Shenzhen; Shanghai will play a more important role.
Intense sub-planck undulations are seen as glimmers of distortions when zooming out, and are smoothed out on a higher level. Vice versa, seemingly flat world could be surprisingly dynamic if viewed in a sufficient close manner.
Figure 5.1 By sequentially magnifying a region of space, its ultramicroscopic properties can be probed | Source: The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene
In the investment world
Fluctuations in prices within a short time frame, however dramatic, could be (at least partially) smoothed out in a longer period of time. Vice versa, more details or clues of changes could possibly be found behind the scene even if prices stay the same in a week/month/year.
2.
What Physics says
While sub-planck variations are cancelling out with each other, some changes are constant and going in certain directions, although might be immaterial/unsensible on a daily basis – e.g. our universe is ever expanding.
In the investment world
Certain underlying trends (company, industry, economy, society, species, planet, etc.) are happening definitely in the long run. Trying to uncover those trends and making investments according to those should be an effective long term approach.
in the case of electromagnetic radiation, v is approximate 3×108 m/s
In ITU standards,
Extremely high frequency (EHF) = 30 to 300 GHz in frequency = 10 to 1 mm in wavelength, so called millimeter-wave (mmW)
Ultra high frequency (UHF) = 300 MHz to 3 GHz in frequency = 1 to 0.1 m in wavelength
UHF is where our current mobile networks live on, with 4G mostly on 700 MHz, 1700-2100 MHz, 1900MHz and 2500-2700 MHz across the globe.
Under the Friis Transmission Law, higher frequency has much higher loss (attenuation) in free-space. For mmW, additional transmission losses occur when traveling through the atmosphere are absorbed by molecules of oxygen, water vapor and other gaseous atmospheric constituents.
Important absorption peaks occur at 24 GHz (for water vapor) and 60 GHz (for oxygen).
mmW attenuation | Source: T.S. Rappaport, NYU Wireless
As range of 5G signals are limited, small cells deployment, collaboration and integration will be essential. Current experiments found a 200-meter range doable.
Signal Outage (200 m Cell) in NYC using Adaptive Single Beam Antennas | Source: T.S. Rappaport, NYC Wireless
Appendix – Frequency Allocation
AT&T frequency table | Source: WikiVerizon frequency table | Source: WikiFrequency allocation in China | Source: spectrummonitoring.com
On Oct 8, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a special report on the impacts of global warming of 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels and related global greenhouse gas emission pathways. And a summary version for policymakers.
1.5°C was the target to strive for, agreed in 2015 Paris Agreement. (countries agreed to limit warming to below 2°C above preindustrial levels by 2100)
However, we are nowhere close.
Source: Climate Action Tracker
Limiting warming to 1.5°C is possible within the laws of chemistry and physics but doing so would require unprecedented changes.
– Jim Skea of Imperial College London and an IPCC co-author
By “unprecedented changes,” Skea means essentially two things. First, the world needs to start cutting emissions. Instead in 2017, the world’s emissions a new record high. Second, we need to reduce those emissions very quickly. (Quartz)
Many researches have been done to analyze the impacts of a warming of 1.5°C and above.
