The history of WeWork's meteoric valuation rise - and fall
- Soon-to-be-public WeWork, the coworking company that leases office space to other startups, is reportedly targeting a $10 billion valuation for its public debut.
- The valuation is significantly lower than the $47 billion valuation it once commanded and comes as WeWork's team scrambles to get investors on board with its heady IPO.
- Since it was founded in 2011, WeWork has raised a whopping $8.39 billion in private funding from backers like SoftBank's $100 billion Vision Fund.
- See WeWork's full valuation history based on Pitchbook data.
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WeWork's public offering is off to a rocky start, and it hasn't even listed its shares yet.
Concerns around the coworking startup's governance, real estate holdings, succession plan, employee retention, and questionable patent purchases have spooked potential investors. WeWork has amended its SEC filings twice already to address several of those concerns, but it might not be enough.
According to a Reuters report, WeWork will target a $10 billion valuation for its IPO, drastically lower than the $47 billion valuation it last fetched in private markets. A $10 billion public valuation would be only slightly above the total amount of funding WeWork has taken in as a private company: about $8.39 billion since 2011, according to Pitchbook data.
It's a striking turn of events for WeWork, which has experienced a meteoric rise since its founding in 2010 by CEO Adam Neumann, his wife Rebekah Neumann, and Miguel McKelvey. The New York-based startup leases office space to other startups and has expanded to more than 100 cities in 29 countries - a turbo-charged expansion plan that has required WeWork to continually raise capital as it burns through billions of dollars.
Until now, even the savviest investors, from venture capital firms to mutual funds to Japan's SoftBank, were eager to pump money into WeWork, driving up its stratospheric valuation. But in this case, what goes up appears to be coming down.
Here's the definitive history of WeWork's valuation ahead of its much anticipated public offering: