Startup WeWork Raises $ 1 Billion from Soft Bank

WeWork raised an additional $ 1 Billion in convertible debt from Soft Bank, the New York based company continues to grow rapidly. Their revenue doubled to a hefty $ 712 million according to the newly released financial information on Thursday.

WeWork is an American company that provides shared work spaces, tech startup communities, and various other services for startups, freelancers, small businesses and large enterprises. Founded by Adam Neumann and Miguel Mckelvey in 2010, it is one of the world’s most valuable startups as it is valued around $ 20 billion.

The startup WeWork has been piling up losses. During the first half of the year, the loss widened to $ 723 million as the company continued to expand, opened new spaces and spent more money to market them. The losses increased while the revenue for the first half of the year has more than doubled to a whopping $ 763.8 million.

The unusual mechanism of piling up losses gives WeWork an immediate cash injection as it continues to funnel money into expanding its shared office business globally.

The Chief Financial Officer, Artie Minson, in a recent interview described the financing as “the ability for us to opportunistically add a billion dollars to the balance sheet.” Minson further added, WeWork has around $ 4 billion in cash and commitments.

Due to being a private company WeWork has no obligation to publicly disclose its financial status. It released the figures to the media in conjunction with a periodic update to bond investors.

The latest funding from its investor Soft Bank, comes in the form of a subordinated convertible note that is structured so that the Japanese company has an edge in the next fundraising round. Soft Bank, has already invested $ 4.4 billion in equity funding in WeWork last August.

“There is no investor closer to us than Soft Bank and it was an opportunistic financing that we were able to do,” Minson said in an interview.

WeWork has more than 5,000 employees in over 280 locations, spread across 77 cities in 23 countries around the world including India, United Kingdom, Japan, Singapore, Australia, Argentina, Germany and Brazil.