Chinese smartphone giant Vivo is latest to splurge on tech tower

Vivo paid about US$182 million for the site of its new 32-storey headquarters, which will house 5,800 workers

US architectural firm NBBJ, designer of the new Vivo tower, said China’s tech giants have outgrown their old digs and are now seeking space to anchor a potential wave of future global expansion

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The tech campus boom in Shenzhen, on the central coast of southern Guangdong province, coincides with China’s trillion-dollar effort to both stimulate the economy and lay the foundations for next-generation internet technology. Photo: Martin Chan

Published: 9:01am, 30 Jun 2020Updated: 9:00am, 30 Jun 2020

China’s No 2 smartphone brand Vivo Mobile Communications has broken ground on a high-rise office in Shenzhen to house its future headquarters, highlighting a construction boom from the country’s burgeoning technology sector.

Scheduled for completion in 2025, Vivo’s 32-storey abode will house 5,800 workers and was designed by NBBJ, the architects behind Samsung Electronics’ Silicon Valley campus and Seattle’s Amazon Spheres. The new building will feature Vivo’s flagship store, indoor gardens at every level and a spiralling exterior with self-shading glass, according to the architectural firm.

Vivo joins the likes of Tencent Holdings and ByteDance in spending big on new office space – much of it in the bustling tech hub of Shenzhen — adding to a mega-building splurge at a time when economic turmoil is forcing other businesses to cut back.

WeChat operator Tencent is building an adjacent campus roughly the size of midtown Manhattan on reclaimed land in Qianhai Bay that cost the company US$1.2 billion. Vivo paid 1.3 billion yuan (US$182 million) for the site of its new headquarters and TikTok owner ByteDance recently spent 1.1 billion yuan for land in the city’s downtown area, according to the local land authority.

Chinese smartphone giant Vivo’s existing headquarters in Dongguan, an industrial city in southern Guangdong province. Photo: Facebook

Kuaishou, a YouTube-like video platform backed by Tencent, is spending 3 billion yuan on a base for its fledgling e-commerce business in Chengdu, complete with studios for live streamers hawking wares.

Some economists say building booms signal an overheated economy that precedes a crash. But NBBJ, which also designed campuses for Alphabet’s Google and Alibaba Group Holding affiliate Ant Financial Services, argues China’s tech giants have outgrown their old digs and are now merely seeking space to anchor a potential wave of future global expansion. Alibaba is the parent company of the South China Morning Post.

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