WeWork goes public

Troubled office sharing platform WeWork went public today through a SPAC merger more than two years after a failed IPO attempt. First announced in March, a merger with BowX Acquisition Corp. reportedly valued the company at roughly $9 billion, a sharp drop from an initial target of $47 billion by SoftBank Group in 2019 before financial difficulties started for the start-up.

Founded in 2010, WeWork received its first investment from Softbank in 2017 and the Japanese conglomerate agreed to buy an 80% stake in the company for $10 billion in October 2019 before it dropped its valuation of the company to $7.3 billion at the end of December 2019 and $2.9 billion in early 2020.