China’s Ucommune gets $200m in Series D round
Chinese co-working space operator Ucommune, formerly named UrWork, has raised $200 million in Series D funding led by All-Stars Investment, with participation from CEC Capital.
This round of funding comes on the heels of SoftBank subscribing to a $3 billion warrant issued by WeWork, which competes with Ucommune in the region. That deal is said to value WeWork at more than $42 billion, underscoring the extent of investor interest in co-working spaces globally.
Ucommune will use the new funding to support its expansion plans. The company wants to open 350 locations in 40 cities globally over the next three years, increasing its overall number of desks from 100,000 to 200,000. Space under management will rise from 730,000 square meters to more than 1.3 million square meters.
It currently serves over 15,000 companies, ranging from start-ups to medium-sized enterprises. They include news aggregator Jinri Toutiao, hotel management firm Oyo rooms, short video platform TikTok and US-listed video streaming business Bilibili.
Ucommune was founded in 2015 by Daqing Mao, a former vice president at Chinese real estate giant China Vanke. It has raised seven rounds of funding, of which the most recent - led by Shandong Guohui Investment and Silkroad Huachuang Investment came in June - according to AVCJ Research. Sinovation Ventures, Prometheus Capital, Banyan Capital, and commercial property developers Yintai Land and Zhongrong International Trust are among the other investors.
The company merged with industry peer New Space last year, in what was said to be the first merger in China’s co-working space market. In March, it acquired domestic peer Woo Space with the valuation of the combined company said to be around $1.7 billion.
Co-working spaces are proliferating in Asia as companies opt for more flexible real estate arrangements. The most significant challenge for the largest operators such as Ucommune comes from US-based WeWork. It received $4.4 billion from SoftBank Group and the SoftBank Vision Fund last year, including $1.4 billion in commitments to the company’s China, Japan, Southeast Asia, and Korea units.
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