Real Estate Trends | "One-Person Companies" Reshape Office Building Market Ecosystem

Currently, “One-Person Companies” (OPC) are quietly emerging and are becoming a new focus for innovation and entrepreneurship in the era of artificial intelligence (AI) across various regions. For the office building market, the rise of OPC communities is also reshaping the ecosystem of office spaces.

OPC Communities and Shared Offices

At present, many places are promoting the development of OPC communities. Previously, the “Shenzhen Action Plan for Building an AI OPC Entrepreneurship Ecosystem Leading Area (2026–2027)” was officially issued, proposing that by the end of 2027, more than 10 OPC communities with an area of no less than 10,000 square meters each will be established, gathering over 10,000 AI innovation and entrepreneurship talents, making Shenzhen the top choice for AI innovation and entrepreneurship nationwide.

So, what do OPC communities actually look like? On-site investigations by reporters reveal that OPC communities are quite different in style from traditional, busy office buildings.

At π Creative Space in Yuehai City, Luohu, Shenzhen, a single workstation might be a company itself. Entrepreneurs interact freely, and the relaxed atmosphere is starkly different from traditional office areas. It is understood that the first batch of eight companies has already moved into π Creative Space, with over ten more interested in joining, focusing on AI marketing, embodied robots, and other fields. Liu Wenhui, the person in charge of π Creative Space, told reporters that currently, eligible companies can move in for free.

In several OPC communities in Futian and Nanshan districts of Shenzhen, some are renting out workstations to entrepreneurs. The monthly rent for some OPC community workstations generally ranges from 600 to 1,000 yuan. Some of these OPC communities are converted from old industrial parks, while others are located within traditional commercial office buildings. Unlike traditional office leasing, community operators also host activities such as industry matchmaking and technical exchanges, rather than merely providing physical office space.

The emergence of OPC communities inevitably brings to mind shared offices. According to Zhang Xiaoduan, Deputy Dean of the Deed Liangxing Research Institute, shared offices mainly focus on flexible work needs of small and micro enterprises or companies with cross-regional coverage, emphasizing space flexibility, community services, and value-added solutions for enterprises. OPC communities tend to target small-scale startups, with similar requirements for space and lease flexibility and cost control. Additionally, tech-heavy and AI-focused OPC communities emphasize resource integration and ecological collaboration, enabling individuals or core entrepreneurs to quickly access supply chain support and related integrated services. Therefore, ultra-low costs, industrial clusters, computing power support, and policy assistance are key elements that distinguish OPC communities from shared offices.

Cultivating Incremental Demand

Currently, including Shenzhen, most key cities’ office markets still face the challenges of oversupply and high vacancy rates. The rise of OPC communities seems to be one of the “solutions” to high vacancy rates in office markets. However, it is important not to overlook whether there is a “client poaching” issue between OPC communities and traditional office operators.

“OPC communities are not yet mainstream in the office market,” said Chang, a manager working in office and shop leasing in Nanshan Science and Technology Park, Shenzhen, with nearly ten years of experience. He noted that in the past one or two years, demand for small workstations and micro-offices has indeed increased. Some office buildings that previously only offered entire-floor leases are now being subdivided for rent, but the demand remains scattered. Chang also emphasized that OPC communities target different customer groups than traditional office buildings. However, many small tech companies still choose to move into Grade-A office buildings during periods of relatively low rent. Traditional office operators should adjust their strategies promptly and offer more services to these startups.

Zhang Xiaoduan believes that OPC communities provide small, refined, and flexible low-cost spaces to support individual and tiny startup teams in relevant fields. More importantly, they rely on industrial clusters and provide essential industry resources to foster the healthy development of early-stage startups. Traditional high-end office buildings tend to focus more on larger, financially capable, and stable enterprise clients. “Of course, OPC companies are not always just lightweight, tiny teams. I see this as a developmental stage. The growth potential of tech companies makes us believe that such spaces may incubate future unicorns or leading enterprises. From this perspective, the low-cost OPC spaces led by the government currently have limited impact on the traditional office market in terms of client diversion, but more importantly, they cultivate incremental demand for R&D and office markets.”

Yu Lingqu, Executive Director of the Financial Development and State-Owned Enterprise Research Institute at China (Shenzhen) Comprehensive Development Research Institute, believes that with AI significantly lowering R&D barriers, individual entrepreneurship is gradually becoming an important supplement to the technological innovation system. “The future innovation structure may feature a ‘large enterprise + OPC’ collaborative model, where large companies provide platforms and application scenarios, and individual entrepreneurs become new innovation nodes.”