Boston life-sciences vacancy reaches 28.1% and venture funding declines across three largest U.S. hubs

Life sciences vacancy in Greater Boston reached 28.1 percent after the third quarter and the three largest U.S. hubs recorded year-over-year declines in venture capital funding, according to Savills reports cited by Commercial Observer. Vacancy across Greater Boston, the San Francisco Bay Area and San Diego County ranged from nearly 24 percent to more than 28 percent, and Boston also had 3.2 million square feet under construction.

Boston is the largest of the three by inventory, at 44.4 million square feet, and the Savills report attributes the vacancy to oversupply. The space under construction equals roughly 7 percent of that existing base. Venture capital funding in the region totaled $2.7 billion in the third quarter, about 16 percent below the $3.2 billion recorded a year earlier. National Institutes of Health funding declined by about $200 million from 2025, though Boston still attracted more NIH money than either the Bay Area or San Diego.

The Bay Area posted 23.8 percent vacancy, down 20 basis points from a year earlier, against inventory that grew slightly to 37.2 million square feet. Life sciences companies there raised $8.3 billion across 428 deals through the first three quarters of 2026, down 13.3 percent from the same period a year earlier. Third-quarter funding of $2.6 billion was roughly 46 percent below the $4.8 billion recorded a year earlier. The report also described a tighter Bay Area development pipeline, citing 800,000 square feet of life sciences space.

Sanofi accounted for two of Greater Boston's largest third-quarter leases, covering 500,000 square feet at 350 Water Street and 400,000 at 450 Water Street in Cambridge. Roche's Genentech opened a 95,000-square-foot center at Harvard's Enterprise Research Campus in Boston's Allston neighborhood on a 10-year lease. In the Bay Area, Revolution Medicines signed for 672,000 square feet at Pacific Shores Center in Redwood City, taking space Google had previously used; the report called it one of the nation's largest recent life sciences leasing transactions. Roche took 67,807 square feet in South San Jose and Intuitive Surgical 46,849 square feet in Sunnyvale.