*this article was written prior to WeWorks’s withdrawal from IPO. Adam Neumann, the ex-CEO of WeWork has since been removed from his position and stripped of his voting rights.

The We Company has filed its S-1 paperwork on 14th August in its plan to go public in around mid-September 2019. It is set up as the holding company behind “WeWork” – the startup well known for designing and building co-working spaces for entrepreneurs and companies.

Backed by SoftBank, the managed office company was initially valued at US$47 billion (we will discuss more about it later). With that, WeWork’s IPO is targeted to become the second-largest offering of the year behind only Uber, which was valued at $82.4 billion following its May 2019 IPO.

“How did the sky-high valuation comes about?”

According to Commercial Observer, WeWork’s valuation had ballooned with each funding round as per below:

It started at $97 million