Appian CEO Matt Calkins has been talking about his dream of a larger headquarters for almost a year now. Now, he finally has it in Tysons Corner.
On Tuesday, Calkins announced alongside Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam that the publicly-traded company will invest $28.4 million to relocate its offices to the former Gannett Co. headquarters at 7950 Jones Branch Drive in McLean, Virginia. Both Atlanta and Raleigh competed for the company's headquarters, as reported by the Atlanta Business Chronicle.
Appian will keep its more than 800 jobs in the region and create 600 new jobs, according to an press release. As a part of the deal, Appian will also receive a $4 million grant from the Commonwealth's Opportunity Fund, a discretionary fund allocated by the state governor to attract new businesses and office expansions in the region. Appian will also receive funding and services for company employee training from the Virginia Jobs Investment Program, an incentives program that helps offset human resources costs for fast-growing companies in the state.
Appian is currently based in Reston, a town in Fairfax County, where it occupies several floors across two buildings at Reston Town Center. With a fast-growing staff, though, the company has been on the hunt for a bigger office.
"We need 200,000 square feet right now. But we grow so quickly — our headcount grows by one-third a year," Calkins told The Washington Business Journal last June. "It's hard to have a campus or a building if you are growing at that speed."
Going into the headquarters search, Calkins didn't express interest in leaving Virginia. And as the Atlanta Business Chronicle pointed out, the searches in the Southeast's top tech hubs could've been a negotiation tool for Fairfax county and other Northern Virginia officials. As recently as February, SEC filings showed that the company was happy where it was at, as WBJ reported.
Founded in 1999, Appian is a software company that designs a platform to allow other companies to customize and create their own software programs. It started trading publicly on the Nasdaq on May 25, 2017, debuting at $12 per share. On Monday, the stock closed at $26.26 per share.
