Update: WeWork’s chief executive officer Adam Neumann confirmed in a blog post that it will buy Meetup. Co-working space giant WeWork will acquire Meetup, according to Crunchbase News. The report says Meetup chief executive officer and co-founder Scott Heiferman shared the news with employees at a company-wide meeting on Monday. WeWork declined to comment on the report. TechCrunch has also contacted Meetup. Reportedly now valued at $20 billion, WeWork raised a massive $4.4 billion round from SoftBank Group and SoftBank Vision Fund this summer. The funding is fueling a shopping spree: over the past six months, WeWork has acquired Fieldlens, a communication system for the construction industry; Singaporean co-working space startup Spacemob; enterprise sales and marketing platform Unomy; and coding bootcamp Flatiron School. WeWork also recently paid $850 million for Lord & Taylor’s former Fifth Avenue flagship department store to serve as its Manhattan headquarters. Founded in 2002, Meetup was an online pioneer when it launched to help groups of people organize offline gatherings based on shared interests. Since then, it’s come up against formidable competition from social media, especially Facebook groups.
US office-sharing provider WeWork is to buy Meetup, a website founded 15 years ago to connect people online and help them organise real-world group activities and meetings. The companies have been collaborating for a number of years, according to WeWork CEO Adam Neumann, with Meetup groups being invited to use WeWork meeting spaces and facilities. WeWork received investment of $4.4bn from Japan's SoftBank, which it has spent on buying specialist companies and property, including the former Lord & Taylor department store in New York, where it's based its new headquarters.