WeWork Co-Founder Hopes to Buy Back Bankrupt Company

The founder of bankrupt co-working startup WeWork reportedly hopes to buy back the company.

Adam Neumann and other investors have been trying to get information from the company since late last year so that they can put together a bid, Bloomberg News reported Tuesday (Feb. 6), citing a letter sent to WeWork’s attorneys seen by the news outlet.

More recently, the report said, the group — which also includes the hedge fund Third Point — has come up with a bankruptcy financing package for WeWork.

According to Bloomberg, the letter said the offer would be for the entire company or its assets, though it does not include a price. The letter does argue that the efforts to craft a bid have been held up by a paucity of information from WeWork.

“We write to express our dismay with WeWork’s lack of engagement even to provide information to my clients in what is intended to be a value-maximizing transaction for all stakeholders,” wrote Alex Spiro, an attorney representing Neumann.

WeWork, which provides shared workspaces for technology startups and other firms, filed for bankruptcy in November of last year, months after warning in a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing that it had doubts about its future as a “going concern.”

It was part of a wave of venture-backed startups that either declared bankruptcy or closed their doors in 2023.

The company went public in 2021 via a merger with special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) BowX Acquisition Corp. WeWork had made a failed attempt to list in 2019, leading Neumann to step down as CEO.

“One might argue that a SPAC deal tempers the enthusiasm WeWork once might have commanded. Back when it was slated to go public in the summer of 2019, the anticipated market cap was north of $40 billion,” PYMNTS wrote at the time.

“A recently reported SPAC valuation of around $8 billion implies at least some (relative) caution about office space, and the way work from home as hybrid-employment approaches may change the way we view commercial real estate, even if it is underpinned by on-demand models and apps and flex-space,” that report said.