WeWork and CDPQ to launch $2.8bn real estate platform

The We Company, the umbrella for flexible office space aggregator, WeWork, has announced that it has created a $2.9 billion real estate platform with funding from CDPQ, a pension fund based out of Canada with connections to Rhone Group, a private equity firm. The new platform will aid in the investment of property in Canada.

The platform, called ARK, has gained $1 billion from Canada’s Ivanhoe Cambridge, the property arm of Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (CDPQ), the Montreal-based company said.

WeWork, founded in 2010, is now New York’s largest tenant as it leases space from landlords to clients ranging from startups to Fortune 500 companies on a short-term basis.

WeWork is at the forefront of a structural shift in how real estate is bought, leased and consumed that will leave behind the landlords and investors who ignore the disruption, said Jonathan Pearce, and Executive Vice President at Ivanhoe Cambridge.

WeWork and other flexible workspace providers are creating a new marketplace for real estate and reducing the industry’s multiple inefficiencies, he said.

“We don’t think this is a fad,” Pearce said in an interview. “Every single aspect of the business is going to change.”

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