In addition to providing workspace, the company wants to become a "fully integrated solution" for its members, WeWork Chief Product Officer David Fano wrote in a blog post last month. To that end, the company has made a series of acquisitions since 2015, the most recent of which was the project management app FieldLens, in June. The company purchased building information modeling consultancy firm Case in August 2015 to help increase its office-space design capabilities, and in March 2016 it bought Welkio, a digital sign-in system for use in its office locations.
WeWork's coworking model has become so popular that the company has started managing full office build-outs for companies that want to offer a similar concept and design to their employees — and they're using technology like laser scanning and BIM to do so. Another reason WeWork is building larger spaces: clients are outgrowing their current WeWork space but want to stay with the company.
According to a recent report on flexible workspaces from The Instant Group, the number of coworking spaces like the kind WeWork provides has grown 18% worldwide in the last year. The average monthly rates for such spaces in New York, Los Angles, Chicago and San Francisco — global leaders for the category — top $900 per person, and are up 12% year-over-year.
California, Texas, Florida, New York and Illinois are home to half of the more than 4,000 flexible workspaces in the U.S. More still, an average of 37% of office space in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and San Francisco is now classified as coworking.