WeWork

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WeWork helped make coworking mainstream.

© Yuriyt/Dreamstime.com

At its height in 2019, coworking company WeWork managed more leased office space than any other company in New York City and London. It was valued at $47 billion and bankrolled primarily by SoftBank, a Japanese technology-focused investment giant. Less than a year later, WeWork’s valuation plummeted to $8 billion. Behind its spectacular rise and fall was Adam Neumann, its Israeli-American chief executive officer (CEO), whom critics have often described as having a “messiah complex.” As WeWork’s charismatic leader for almost nine years, Neumann convinced some of the most savvy investors that his office space leasing business should be valued like a tech start-up, potentially worth billions—if not trillions—of dollars. Then it all came crashing down.

In the summer of 2008, Neumann and Miguel McKelvey partnered with a Brooklyn landlord to lease a floor of a building in an up-and-coming neighborhood as shared office space. They began operations as GreenDesk in May, offering subdivided furnished offices on short-term leases to small businesses. By redesigning the floor, dividing it into smaller units, and providing shared amenities including Internet access and meeting rooms, they earned more than they would have by leasing the floor to a single client.

In a matter of months, the business had about 350 tenants and expanded to another of the landlord’s buildings. Neumann was keen on further expansion, but the landlord was uninterested. Neumann and McKelvey sold their shares of the business to the landlord in 2010, receiving payouts of about $500,000 each.

That same year the duo founded WeWork with a similar business model to GreenDesk, except that instead of partnering and splitting profits with a landlord, they secured long-term leases on office spaces and sublet desks for short periods. The timing proved favorable. The financial crisis of 2007–08 had crimped demand for office space, driving down rents and making landlords more open to negotiation. They found a building in Manhattan and signed a lease agreement in their own names. With a $15 million commitment from an early investor, WeWork launched its first location at New York’s SoHo district in 2010. Its fresh take on corporate offices, combining well-lit offices with perks such as coffee, beer, and arcade games, appealed to start-ups and small firms looking for space that reflected the tastes of younger millennial workers. The opportunities it offered for networking and community building were central to Neumann’s vision for WeWork—what he called a “physical social network.”

WeWork grew quickly. By the end of 2011 it had four locations in New York, a wait-list of potential renters, and two new investors, and was on the cusp of breaking even. Besides the usual fare of small businesses and freelancers it drew, a number of tech start-ups began renting its office spaces. Neumann set his sights on expanding to other cities.

In 2012, WeWork picked up $17 million in early-stage funding from investors including Benchmark, a venture capital firm known for early investments in eBay (EBAY), Uber Technologies (UBER), and Twitter—now known as X. The implied valuation of about $100 million was less than Neumann had hoped for. McKelvey persuaded him to take the deal by offering to cede a large share of effective control in and future profits from WeWork to Neumann over time. With the funding, the company opened two locations in San Francisco and Los Angeles.

Although the company was fundamentally a real estate business, Neumann began positioning WeWork as a tech company, chasing the lofty valuations software companies typically enjoy. The closest it came to justifying its tech ambitions was with an app for WeWork members to network and—more tenuously—with WeWork Labs, an incubator for early-stage tech start-ups.

Unlike a software company, however, WeWork’s costs did not plateau as it scaled. Every new location meant more revenue but also more spending on leases, staff, renovations, and other expenses. Moreover, the company signed long-term leases of more than a decade, but sublet them on a short-term basis (often just months), putting it at risk of having to pay fixed costs if revenue dried up in case of a sudden downturn.

Nonetheless, Neumann continued to woo investors with tours of WeWork’s spaces—made to appear more lively with orchestrated parties—and bullish projections of revenue growth, which foregrounded initial concessions from landlords and masked future liabilities. Although revenue climbed and profit margins from operations were strong on paper, WeWork was burning through cash as it pursued the rapid expansion Neumann constantly pushed for. Throughout his time at WeWork, Neumann regularly projected future profits and consistently delivered deeper losses.

In 2013, the company raised another $40 million from investors at a $300 million to $400 million valuation. A $150 million investment round headed by JPMorgan Chase (JPM) in early 2014 pushed WeWork’s valuation to $1.5 billion, making it a unicorn, a Silicon Valley term for start-ups valued at $1 billion or more. That number soared to $5 billion and then $10 billion in successive rounds of fundraising as mutual funds and banks poured hundreds of millions of dollars into the company, fueling its expansion to Seattle, Washington, Boston, and its first overseas coworking space in London in 2014. Neumann was worth $1.5 billion on paper by 2016. That year the company launched the short-lived WeLive, which offered furnished micro-apartments and shared communal spaces.

Neumann often sold some of his own shares in fundraising rounds, pocketing millions, even as he changed the corporate structure to retain overwhelming control over the company.

Neumann turned his attention toward Asia, although some existing shareholders were against the idea. WeWork entered China in 2016 after a $430 million funding round that valued WeWork at $16 billion. In 2017, it opened its first center in India in partnership with Bengaluru-based Embassy Group. But as expenses consistently outstripped revenue amid its expansion, WeWork was losing money at an alarming rate. In mid-2016 the company laid off 7% of its workforce—about 70 employees—to cut costs. It needed more money and fast.

The money came from Masayoshi Son, head of SoftBank, the Japanese technology-focused investment group with a $100 billion fund. In 2017, SoftBank invested $4.4 billion in WeWork, raising its valuation to $20 billion. It was the second-largest private investment ever in a U.S. start-up and made WeWork the fourth most valuable start-up in the country. Some of the capital was directed toward expansion in China, Japan, and other Asia-Pacific markets, while the rest went to buying out early investors—including Neumann—for hundreds of millions of dollars.

Flush with cash, WeWork snapped up expensive real estate for offices and coworking spaces worldwide, ramped up marketing efforts, acquired companies outside its core business, experimented with new technologies, and hosted high-profile events that were sometimes criticized for their lavishness. It rented out whole floors to corporate giants such as Amazon.com (AMZN), Microsoft (MSFT), Salesforce (CRM), and Facebook (META) and launched ventures beyond office leasing, including an elementary school called WeGrow, run by Neumann’s wife, Rebekah.

Neumann often maintained WeWork was profitable and on course to be the first trillion-dollar company. In reality, it was racking up ever-widening losses even as Neumann and Son emphasized ambitious projections for revenue growth. When WeWork entered the public bond markets in 2018, it introduced a metric called “community-adjusted EBITDA” (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization). The measure excluded major expenses such as design, marketing, and administration. Critics argued its use created a misleading picture of profitability.

Neumann cashed out WeWork stock and borrowed funds against his shares in the company to finance personal business acquisitions, real estate, high-end cars, and other luxuries. In early 2018, the company bought a $63 million private jet for his use. He also renovated his office, adding a punching bag, sauna, and ice bath. Many of his friends and relatives came to occupy high-ranking positions at WeWork, even as he mandated annual staff cuts of about 20%. The company’s culture was marked by long hours, low pay, complaints of inappropriate conduct, and a lawsuit alleging sexual harassment. Some employees even compared it to a cult.

In 2018, Neumann pitched Son an idea for a massive fund that he believed could disrupt and dominate all sides of the real estate market. Son initially showed interest in the plan, agreeing to inject another roughly $20 billion into WeWork at a $47 billion valuation and buy out all existing shareholders except Neumann. But Son backed out in 2019, following disapproval from his fund’s major backers and a disappointing initial public offering (IPO) for SoftBank’s telecom arm in Japan, which fell 15% on the first day of trading. He offered WeWork only $2 billion at the same valuation.

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Adam Neumann at a WeWork event in Los Angeles, 2019.

© Michael Kovac—WeWork/Getty Images

WeWork had about 500,000 paying customers in more than 500 locations by 2019, but it was running out of cash. Preparations began to raise money through an IPO, a step Neumann had long resisted. But when WeWork released its IPO prospectus (known formally as an S-1) to the public in August 2019, it met with immediate backlash. The weaknesses in the company’s management became obvious:

As public sentiment turned against the company, WeWork put its IPO plans on hold and later withdrew its prospectus as banks handling the listing trimmed WeWork’s estimated worth to $15 billion. Under pressure from other shareholders, Neumann stepped down as CEO in September 2019 but stayed on as nonexecutive chair. The following month, SoftBank kept WeWork afloat with a $10 billion bailout, valuing the company at less than $8 billion and making SoftBank the largest shareholder. As part of that deal, Neumann was forced to give up his board role and controlling stake in exchange for an exit package valued at $1.7 billion in loans, stock, and consulting fees.

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Anne Hathaway and Jared Leto in the TV miniseries WeCrashed (2022).

© Apple TV+

Under SoftBank, WeWork sought to cut costs by laying off thousands of employees, selling side businesses, reworking expensive leases, and restructuring its debt. WeWork went public at a $9 billion valuation by merging with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) in 2021, but continued to lose billions of dollars. It filed for bankruptcy in 2023 for its U.S. and Canada locations as the COVID-19 pandemic weakened demand for office space. Neumann offered more than $500 million to buy the company back but was rejected. WeWork emerged from bankruptcy after exiting expensive leases, shedding $4 billion in debt, and slimming down to about 330 locations worldwide. Yardi Systems, a real estate software company headed by Anant Yardi, became WeWork’s majority owner in 2024, with a 60% stake in the company.

The company’s India division, majority owned by Embassy Group, was unaffected by the bankruptcy. WeWork India, a franchisee of WeWork Global operating on a leaner business model, received regulatory approval to launch its IPO in 2025—an full offer for sale, allowing existing equity holders to sell all or part of their stakes. The company went public in October 2025, raising $338 million at a valuation of nearly $1 billion.