Andreessen Horowitz Brings $1B HQ to Related Ross' West Palm Beach Tower

Andreessen Horowitz, the venture firm managing more than $90 billion, is putting a dedicated regional headquarters inside Related Ross' CityPlace Tower at 525 Okeechobee Boulevard in downtown West Palm Beach. The Class AA building will house the firm's American Dynamism practice, which invests its $1.176 billion fund in defense, aerospace, manufacturing, public safety, supply chains, industrials, housing and education.

Neither side disclosed square footage, lease term or rent. The office is expected to open in 2027.

"It is critical for our fund to have a presence wherever ambitious founders are tackling consequential problems."

Katherine Boyle, the general partner who co-founded American Dynamism, framed the move as a bet on geography mattering again in venture: the Pentagon and its contractors aren't relocating to Silicon Valley, so a16z is putting its defense team where the customers already are.

The Fund a16z Just Doubled Down On

American Dynamism Fund 2 closed at $1.176 billion as part of a broader raise a16z announced in January, more than $15 billion across five vehicles: a $6.75 billion growth fund, $1.7 billion apiece for its apps and infrastructure funds, $1.176 billion for American Dynamism, and $700 million for bio and healthcare. American Dynamism has become one of the firm's most active defense-tech checkbooks since Boyle co-founded the practice, backing companies building for what she has called the national interest rather than the consumer market.

A Second Act After Miami Beach

This isn't a16z's first South Florida address. The firm leased 8,300 square feet at 2340 Collins Ave. in Miami Beach, inside a Starwood Capital building, back in 2022. It gave up the space in 2024 as the crypto-era wave of VC offices in Miami cooled.

"It was a bidding war."

Brandon Charnas, co-founder of Current Real Estate Advisors, described the scramble for a16z's old Collins Avenue space, which Bausch + Lomb ultimately took. Three years later, a16z is back in South Florida, this time 70 miles up the coast and built around defense capital instead of the consumer and crypto bets that defined its first Miami run.

Why West Palm Beach

Florida ranks fourth nationally in Department of War spending, hosts 21 major military installations and is home to three of the country's 11 unified combatant commands. State data puts the sector's footprint at $102.6 billion in annual economic impact and more than 865,000 direct and indirect jobs.

"Florida's Gold Coast has become one of the most important places in the country where that work is happening."

Boyle's read on the market lines up with the capital already moving there. Defense-tech deals nationally have gotten bigger fast: the average round size roughly tripled, from about $47 million in 2025 to about $136 million in 2026. A cluster of defense and dual-use startups, including Palantir, Ampera, Zulu Pods, MATERIAL and Magnet Defense, already operate in the region. Vanderbilt University added its own bet on the market this summer, naming Pratim Biswas to lead a new engineering initiative at its West Palm Beach campus.

Stephen Ross, Related Ross' chairman and CEO, has been courting exactly this kind of tenant.

"Our goal has always been to help build South Florida into a place where the world's most ambitious companies, founders, and investors can build for the long term."

Related Ross Keeps Stacking Wins

CityPlace Tower already houses GID, Seubert & Associates and McLaughlin & Stern. Related Ross has landed roughly half a million square feet of leases across its downtown West Palm Beach portfolio over the past year, including Cleveland Clinic's 120,000-square-foot prelease at the still-under-construction 15 CityPlace, BDO and Shutts & Bowen, and Citizens Bank and JPMorgan Private Wealth at One Flagler. a16z becomes the highest-profile name yet in that run, and the one most directly tied to the defense capital Related Ross has been chasing.

What's Next

Related Ross plans to bring the Wall Street Journal's Invest Live event and a Defense Tech Leadership Summit to CityPlace in early 2027, timed to a16z's office opening. That puts one of venture's biggest defense checkbooks, a16z's $1.176 billion American Dynamism fund, in the same tower as the conferences meant to introduce it to Florida's founders.