TikTok Opens New L.A. Office in Culver City
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TikTok, in a signal of the short-form video app’s growing clout and entertainment ambitions, announced the company’s Los Angeles operations have moved into a new 120,000-square-foot office in Culver City, Calif.
TikTok’s new office space occupies five floors at the C3 campus at 5800 Bristol Parkway in Culver City. According to the company, the space was designed from the ground up “to embody TikTok’s fun and joyful personality.” The heart of the offices feature a bright pink staircase that runs through each floor and follows a bespoke mural created by TikTok’s internal design team.
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Previously, TikTok’s L.A.-based team was in a smaller office space, located at 10010 Venice Blvd. in Culver City. Staffers moved into the new digs this past Monday. TikTok now has over 400 employees in offices across the U.S., including in Los Angeles, Silicon Valley, and New York.
“Located between the innovative tech companies in Silicon Beach and the streaming content companies at Hayden tract, TikTok truly sits at the intersection of technology and entertainment, physically and figuratively,” said Vanessa Pappas, general manager, TikTok U.S., in a statement. “While we are a global company, having a permanent office in LA speaks to our commitment to the U.S. market and deepens our bonds with the city, and the talent and companies, that call it home.”
TikTok has in a few short years ballooned into one of the most popular social apps in the world — it’s been installed more than 1.5 billion times, per research firm Sensor Tower. TikTok is owned by Chinese internet giant ByteDance, which acquired startup Musical.ly in a $1 billion deal. In recent months, TikTok has come under scrutiny in the U.S. over potential security and data-privacy issues and whether the Chinese government is censoring content in the app.
Separately, Bloomberg reported that ByteDance has launched a search for a U.S.-based CEO to run TikTok, while current TikTok chief Alex Zhu (who co-founded Musical.ly) would potentially continue to oversee product and engineering in China.
The new TikTok L.A. office features a fully open floor plan along with conference rooms, private phone booths, a stadium-style presentation and gathering space, and terraces to for indoor/outdoor work. A content-creation studio will be completed by the summer of 2020, a facility that will be available to TikTok creators and partners.
The office was designed in collaboration with global architecture and design firm Gensler. The company selected a LEED Gold-certified building that exceeds California standards, featuring design and building strategies aimed at energy and water conservation, reducing carbon-dioxide emissions, and improving indoor environmental quality.
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