WeWork Sells Majority Stake in China, Receiving $200M Investment in the Chinese Unit

American shared workspace provider WeWork’s Chinese unit secured a $200 million investment led by Trustbridge Partners, leaving WeWork with a minority stake in its Chinese branch while making Trustbridge Partners the controlling shareholder.

Previously in 2018, the Shanghai-based equity company Trusbridge Partners backed WeWork China in its Series B round of financing. After this round of investment, WeWork China assigned Micheal Jiang as the acting chief executive, who is an operating partner at Trustbridge Partners and was previously a senior vice president at Meituan.

Based in New York, the co-working giant first tapped into the Chinese market in 2016 with its brand attitude and chic store design, right at the point when co-working culture was beginning to thrive in China. Since then, over 100 WeWork spaces opened in 12 cities across the country, claiming approximately 65,000 members as of today.

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In 2019, WeWork suffered a listing disaster, failing to go public while its capital valuation plummeted by 90%. The major setback negatively impacted SoftBank Group Corp. and Masayoshi Son, its two investors.

The company later contracted its business worldwide. As the Covid-19 pandemic struck the world and domestic competitors like Naked Hub attempted to take over market share, the economy saw a worsened surviving scenario for WeWork’s Chinese unit. China now takes up around one-eighth of its total stores down from the former share of one-sixth in 2018.

WeWork China declined to comment on the investment and personnel change.