Silicon Valley tech giants in the years leading up to the pandemic collected gleaming office campuses around the world as trophies for what appeared to be boundless growth. Those days of blockbuster real estate expansions appear to be over for now, however, as job cuts and profitability concerns have companies pulling back on investments.

International tech hubs in London, Dublin, Berlin and Paris are reeling as some of the biggest companies shed office space after the pandemic forced many to reconsider their real estate needs and an economic downturn pummeled tech stocks and sparked widespread layoffs. After roughly a decade of rapid expansion, large technology firms including Google, Facebook parent company Meta, Twitter and Salesforce are offloading expensive real estate in the United States and overseas.

Within years of blockbuster leases such as LinkedIn's regional headquarters expansion at Dublin's Wilton Park development, companies are walking back their commitments to expanding their European footprints, leaving behind empty shells in high-profile cities.

Meta in late 2022 is backing off plans to fill roughly 700,000 square feet of office space across London and Dublin as it scales back on its international real estate portfolio, while Google leaves at least one London office as its lease for the space nears expiration. Salesforce confirmed it was trying to sublet some of its London office tower as Amazon and Microsoft have tabled pandemic-related plans to expand in the United Kingdom.

Andy Poppink, the markets CEO for JLL's business in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, has lived through several Silicon Valley boom-and-bust periods, "a bit of a cyclical retrenching" is playing out internationally for real estate.

“Tech companies have fallen out of favor among stock investors for the time being, and higher interest rates provide a higher hurdle from a growth and revenue standpoint," Poppink told CoStar News of cutbacks that echo the late 1990s' dot-com bust. "Tech companies will then look at the bottom line and the biggest costs are labor and property. So, they pull back on hiring plans and real estate footprints."

Many big tech firms benefited from a financial boost during the pandemic lockdowns when people stayed home and spent more time in front of a phone or computer screen. Companies hired aggressively to keep up with the sudden growth spurt, signing massive office deals and acquiring billions of dollars of real estate around the world that was expected to house their expanding workforces.

However, macroeconomic challenges and declining advertising revenue over the past year have meant companies are prioritizing profits over growth. Many Silicon Valley tech giants are now making deep cuts to their real estate portfolios by shutting down office locations, subleasing unwanted space, terminating prelease agreements and walking away from future investments.

Google is leaving at least one of its London offices as its lease for the space nears its expiration.

Through the latter half of 2022, tech giants dumped millions of square feet of office space across European markets such as London and Dublin, much of which was never even occupied.

Beyond Europe, tech real estate cuts have unfolded across the United States, pushing sublease availability and vacancy rates to record highs in top-tier markets such as New York City, San Francisco, Seattle and Silicon Valley.

The offloading has dealt an immediate blow to big tech firms' contribution to leasing volume and occupancy. In London — long considered a starting point for companies planning a European expansion — tech, media and telecommunications tenants made up their smallest share of the market in 10 years, according to data from JLL.

The brokerage estimated that the tech sector accounted for 17% of Central London's office occupancy through 2022, accounting for roughly 1.6 million square feet. That is a steep drop from the roughly 29% share tech companies commanded in 2021, according to JLL.

"Many of the large U.S.-based global tech businesses such as Meta have accumulated large footprints in London based on significant growth in their headcount projections," Chris Valentine, head of JLL's central London office, told CoStar News. "As they have entered into this more challenging economic environment, some of these growth projections are being re-visited and costs are being reviewed, leading to hiring freezes, and in some instances, rounds of" layoffs. He added that "where surplus real estate is identified, disposal programs have been instigated."

In Ireland, Facebook's parent company abandoned part of its plans for a new European headquarters shortly after signing a 25-year lease at CS Consulting Group's Fibonacci Square development in Dublin. The social media company is now trying to sublet almost 400,000 square feet of space at the project, a decision closely linked to is plans to lay off more than 11,000 workers in the city.

Microsoft-owned LinkedIn was also preparing to significantly expand its European footprint in the Irish capital. By late 2022, however, the company said it was revisiting plans to expand into four office buildings at real estate developer IPUT's Wilton Park project. With most of its Irish employees continuing to work remotely, LinkedIn will instead move into only two of the buildings once the development finishes construction around 2025.

The Dublin office market had “witnessed a lot of disruption” during the second half of 2022 as large tech firms cut back on space they had agreed to occupy, IPUT Chief Executive Niall Gaffney told CoStar News.

Although he predicted a “churn” of property during the first six months of 2023, Gaffney said the expansion of big tech in Dublin, albeit slightly pared back, was still a positive factor in the market.

“Yes, we have seen some of the tech firms take steps to reduce their office space," he said. "But, in the context of employment numbers within fintech and pharma sectors in this country, the level of adjustment is small. So, the moves need to be put in context, and underlying employment growth still remains positive."

While the biggest names in the international tech industry are scrambling to navigate this retrenchment phase, smaller startups and lesser-known tech companies are still scooping up space.

The tech industry still accounts for about one-quarter of the office market in Ireland, according to third-quarter 2022 data from Savills Ireland, and office-based employment within the sector, or jobs that require a person commute to a physical workspace, has grown by 25% since the fourth quarter of 2019.

Deals such as those signed by Chinese social media firm TikTok — which has agreed to lease more than 220,000 square feet across two new offices in London and Dublin — underscore the sector's strength in the international commercial real estate market, even if big U.S.-based names such as Google or Meta pull back.

Those tech giants and their decisions to downsize overseas may be grabbing the headlines now, but there are still plenty of homegrown and midsize tech companies willing to take on additional space, Savills' director of commercial research Clare Bailey told CoStar News.

From fintech GoCardless and Synk, a cloud-computing cybersecurity company, in London to French startups Blablacar and Leboncoin in Paris, smaller tech companies are propping up the industry's share of international office markets with their ongoing willingness to invest in additional space.

So while big tech's role on the international real estate stage may be dimming, JLL's Valentine said, "there are other businesses within the sector that continue to grow and expand their footprint in a meaningful way."

Reporting was contributed by CoStar journalists Paul Norman, Luke Haynes and Bert Erik ten Cate in London, and Luc-Etienne Rouillard Lafond in Paris.