Lone Star buys Silicon Valley R&D portfolio for Fund VII

An affiliate of Lone Star Real Estate Fund VII has completed what Lone Star Funds called the largest institutional aggregation of class A, predominantly single-story R&D real estate in Silicon Valley. The portfolio totals roughly 2.2 million square feet across six campuses, 50 buildings and 140 acres in the region's Golden Triangle, according to IREI, and the assets are built around specialized infrastructure for AI, advanced manufacturing, medical device and semiconductor tenants: upgraded power, HVAC, labs, clean rooms and loading facilities.

TMG Partners and Grove are joint-venture partners and will operate the properties, while Lone Star plans value-add upgrades and active management, a hold-and-reposition strategy rather than a quick recycle. Jérôme Foulon, global head of commercial real estate at Lone Star, framed the rationale in manufacturing terms: California is the largest manufacturing state in the U.S., employing over 1.2 million workers and contributing over $390 billion to GDP.

Lone Star's deal sits at the end of a capital cycle: institutional allocations chasing AI exposure have moved from compute to power and land, then to the industrial real estate where chips, devices and medical equipment are made. The portfolio's scale, Lone Star said, provides diversification and growth potential as its tenant base evolves. The value sits in what is hard to replicate: clean rooms, lab-grade HVAC and power infrastructure already in place on 140 acres in a constrained submarket. Standard office space can be built to any spec; a 50-building R&D campus with those modifications is closer to a utility than a building. The scarce assets are the land and electricity attached to the labs.