KITCHENER - One of Waterloo Region's highest profile startups, Kik Interactive, is moving into Catalyst137.

The company behind the Kik messaging app employs about 90 people in its current office at 420 Weber St. N. in Waterloo, and another 60 in Tel Aviv, New York, Toronto and San Francisco. When it moved into the Weber Street offices in 2011 it employed fewer than 10 people.

"It's been a long time coming," said Mike Roberts, Kik's vice-president of product and engineering, said of the move to larger quarters in the Kitchener building.

The company wanted to move into larger offices last year, but it was too busy following the launch of its cryptocurrency called Kin.

Kik is taking 23,000 square feet of space in the sprawling technology centre that was built inside a former tire warehouse at 137 Glasgow St.

Roberts said the company was attracted to the space because it is close to Belmont Village, downtown Kitchener and already has several tech firms as tenants.

"Catalyst is in a really exciting area of the city," said Roberts. "Catalyst just rose to the top of the list pretty much immediately."

Kik will move into its new office in the coming months.

The new space will give the company much needed room to grow.

"We are definitely always hiring," said Roberts. "We have been in perpetual hiring mode."

The company is looking for data engineers and Android and iOS developers. Roberts said Kik is "doubling down" on the Toronto Waterloo Region Corridor because of its success in recruiting talent coming out of the University of Waterloo.

"The region is just very unique in terms of access to talent," he said.

Kik raised more than $90 million last year with the launch of its own cryptocurrency. Users of the messaging app can earn and spend Kin inside the app.

Developing Kin has been challenging, Roberts said, but the company is about to launch its first two Kin experiences within the Kik app.

"We finally have the technology stack where we can start that integration," he said.

"We have had a lot of bumps on the road," said Roberts. "I think a lot of cryptocurrency companies are finding the technology is not quite where its supposed to be. We have basically found ways around all of our challenges."

Kik's new home was developed by Kurtis McBride, co-founder and chief executive officer of Miovision, local developer Voisin Capital and Toronto-based Osmington Inc.

The inside and outside of the 450,000-square-foot building were completely renovated for tech companies and hardware startups. Almost all of the space has been leased.

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Tenants include Miovision, the Business Development Bank of Canada, SigmaPoint Technologies and the PCC Group