WeWork Is Raising Funds at $35 Billion Valuation, SoftBank Executive Says

(Bloomberg) -- WeWork Cos. is seeking to raise funds at a $35 billion valuation, a price tag that would place the co-working startup above companies like Airbnb and SpaceX, according to an executive at SoftBank Group Corp., which is a major WeWork investor.

Rajeev Misra, who runs SoftBank’s $100 billion Vision Fund and is the chief executive officer of SoftBank Investment Advisors, said Tuesday at the CogX conference in London that even though WeWork has been criticized as overvalued at $17 billion, it’s now raising money at $35 billion, according to a person who saw a video of the talk, which is no longer available online. Misra also said that WeWork could at some point be a $100 billion company, but didn’t comment further on whether SoftBank would participate in this funding. WeWork declined to comment.

WeWork, which runs shared office space for startups as well as large enterprises, has raised billions of dollars in equity, including $4.4 billion last summer from SoftBank, which split the money between WeWork’s central business and its three Asian subsidiaries. Misra’s comments were reported earlier by Business Insider.

For more cash, WeWork tapped the bond markets in April when it sold $702 million in seven-year unsecured bonds. The company’s bond offering documents showed fast-growing sales but even faster-increasing losses. WeWork had total revenue of $886 million but a net loss of $933 million in 2017, according to the documents. It has also committed to pay $18 billion in rent in the coming years for the buildings it currently leases, $5 billion of which will be due in the next four years.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Andrew Pollack at apollack1@bloomberg.net, Molly Schuetz

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