In December 2016, Japan's SoftBank Corp group's founder Masayoshi Son met President Donald Trump and promised to invest $50 billion, as well as create another 50,000 new job opportunities in the United States.
It seems that Son is keeping his promise as SoftBank is close to completing an investment in office sharing startup WeWorks, which may be worth over $3 billion.
Son led SoftBank to garner a string of acquisitions and also invested in quite a few places over the past months. The company's latest acquisition was an all-cash deal to gain asset manager Fortress Investment Group.
Details Of The Investment
The investment will be done in two stages. The first tranche of funding will be worth $2 billion after which, the second round worth more than $1 billion would follow.
Rumors are rife that the second investment may be worth $2 billion. The total amount of investment in the office sharing estate startup could go up to $4 billion.
The tender offer for WeWorks insiders is estimated to be around $44.10 per internal share. WeWork, whose current valuation stands at around $17 billion, will rise to more than $20 billion if SoftBank goes ahead with the full investment.
Although there are rumors of the investment going through, SoftBank hasn't officially confirmed anything so far. According to investors, SoftBank has been in talks with people from WeWork for quite some time with regard to the proposed investment.
WeWork:The Office Sharing Startup
WeWork is a New York-based American startup which provides shared workspaces to businesses, freelancers, and other start-ups. It currently functions in 19 cities in the United States and 11 other countries which include, Canada, China, Hong Kong, Australia, France, and the UK.
WeWork co founder Miguel McKelvey recently stated that the company is planning to expand its operations to Beijing soon. McKelvey further added that the estate rental company will continue to gather capital for expansion purposes, ahead of its public listing in the near future. However, he did not mention a specific date as to when one can expect that to happen.
In the past two years, WeWork has raised funding worth more than $1 billion from firms such as Goldman Sachs, China-based Hony Capital, and Benchmark.
SoftBank, The Hyper Acquisitive Japanese Telecom Company
SoftBank has made investments in some of most popular and trending tech startups in the world. It is in the process of acquiring asset management firm Fortress. It also announced that it was planning to merge with Sprint.
In 2016, SoftBank purchased Britain's most valuable technology company ARM holdings for $32 billion.
Photo: MIKI Yoshihito | Flickr
