The merger with BowX, a special purpose acquisition company , values WeWork at around $9 billion, a steep drop from the $47 billion the money-losing company was worth in a 2019 private funding round led by Japanese conglomerate SoftBank Group Corp.
“Sometimes you don’t pick the path a path picks you. In December, we were approached by BowX and other SPACS,” Mathrani told CNBC in an interview. SPACs like BowX are shell companies that raise funds in an IPO with the goal of merging with an unidentified private company. For the company being acquired, the merger is an alternative way to go public over a traditional IPO.Prospective investors in WeWork’s 2019 IPO were in part spooked by losses that stretched into the billions of dollars with no clear path to profitability.