From behemoth to bankruptcy, it’s been a wild ride for a start-up sometimes battered by forces outside its control – lockdowns and a slow return to offices.
It caps a wild ride for a company that began with the idea of re-imagining staid offices as fun places to hang out and grew to a behemoth worth $US47 billion at its peak. A botched 2019 initial public offering and erratic behaviour by co-founder Adam Neumann started WeWork’s downfall, but the company was also battered by forces outside its control, such as Covid-19 lockdowns and a slow return to offices that undermined demand.
While WeWork reached a sweeping debt restructuring deal in early 2023, it quickly fell into trouble again. In August, it said there was “substantial doubt” about its ability to continue operating. Now, the company has struck a restructuring agreement in which creditors represent roughly 92 per cent of its secured notes. It plans to “streamline” its rental portfolio of office space, it said in a statement.
The company also sought to expand beyond offices to living spaces, creating two residential apartment buildings called WeLive, “a world where no one feels alone”. One particularly heady venture was WeGrow, a private elementary school housed in WeWork’s Manhattan headquarters that aimed to raise “global citizens” who “understand what their superpowers are”. WeWork also dabbled in a search engine optimisation company, a superfood start-up and a wave pool maker.
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