Inside Ibotta’s leases: Firm spending third more on rent in move to LoDo

Ibotta’s new office is at 16 Market Square, which sits at the intersection of Blake and 16th Streets. (BusinessDen file)

Ibotta, the Denver-based publicly traded couponing app, is not settling for discounted office space.

Public financial filings show the business will pay 37% more per square foot in base rent when the company moves its headquarters to 97,000 square feet at the 16 Market Square building in downtown Denver.

The company will pay $34.95 a square foot in base rent to start at 1400 16th St., with annual 2.5 percent increases thereafter, according to the lease. That doesn’t count free rent for the first six months.

Ibotta is currently paying $25.50 a square foot in base rent at 1801 California St. The company moved there in 2016, and its lease for 75,000 square feet expires on Halloween. 

BusinessDen broke the news last fall that the move to 16 Market Square was in the works. Ibotta spokeswoman Hilary O’Byrne said the company plans to move in late summer or early fall. 

The company’s lease at 16 Market Square expires at the end of February 2036, although it includes an option to extend for another five or 10 years after that.

The company’s new landlord, a pension fund, is putting up $14 million to help Ibotta build out its office space, per the lease. The company will first move into 68,000 square feet on the building’s fifth and sixth floors, and then grow to its final footprint two years later, adding space on the fourth floor.

Ibotta CEO Bryan Leach previously told BusinessDen he chose 16 Market Square — which is about 20 years newer than 1801 California St. — due to its proximity to transit at Union Station. He kept his search confined to Denver’s urban core, never looking at neighborhoods like RiNo or the Denver Tech Center.

Bryan Leach

The move will take place a little over a year after Ibotta went public in April 2024. The company’s stock price has since declined 58%, with a steep 40% drop last month when the company reported earnings.

Leach, the company’s CEO, also disclosed on that earnings call that he had laid off 8% of Ibotta’s workforce, which was 830 employees as of last November.

“This decision was necessary to maximize our potential and advance our mission,” Leach said on the call.

Despite the hiccup, the company’s leader said he is still seeking to grow the business in the near-term. Ibotta reported $98.4 million in fourth-quarter revenue for 2024, a 1% decline from the same period in 2023. 

“To be clear, we are not implementing a hiring freeze. We will continue hiring and investing heavily in R&D and in sales,” Leach said. 

Ibotta’s Chief Financial Officer, Sunit Patel, resigned last week to join Houston-based communications infrastructure firm Crown Castle.