WeWork

WeWork (also known as 'The We Company') is a commercial real estate company providing shared workspaces for startups. Founded in 2010 by Adam Neumann and Miguel McKelvey, it manages over 4m square metres of office space as of 2018.

WeWork have hosted startups and companies such as Reddit, HackHands and PepsiCo.

In 2011, WeWork opened WeWork Labs, a startup incubator, in New York.

In January 2019, WeWork was rebranded to The We Company. It paid Adam Neumann and additional WeWork founders, who owned the trademark, $5.9m to license the name (this was later returned to the company). The company also stated its valuation was $47bn.

In August 2019, WeWork announced it was to go public. There was heavy media coverage on the company losses highlighted by the S-1 filing disclosures, and analysts expressed doubt about the company's profitability.

In September 2019, following pressure from investors, co-founder Adam Neumann resigned as CEO and gave up majority voting control. Neumann's exit package was valued at $1.7bn. WeWork also announced it would delay its planned stock market listing until the end of the year. Later than same month, the company formerly postponed the IPO. At that time, the company's valuation had dropped to $10bn - $2.8bn less than the capital it had raised since 2010.

In October, SoftBank confirmed an $8bn capital infusion as a lifeline for the company. The move resulted in SoftBank owning approximately 80% of the company, however it does not hold a majority of voting rights. As part of the agreement, Adam Neumann has become a board observer, and Marcelo Claure, the COO of SoftBank Group, has become Executive Chairman of the Board of Directors of WeWork.

At its peak, WeWork had over 12,500 employees in more than 32 countries, however in November 2019, WeWork announced plans to lay off 2,400 employees globally.

In January 2020 WeWork announced it had found its new CEO. Real estate exec Sandeep Mathrani was revealed to be taking over the top spot from co-CEO's Sebastian Gunningham, who were running the company since Adam Neumann's well-documented departure last year.