SoftBank Group mulling investment of over $1 bn in WeWork Cos: report

SoftBank Group is mulling an investment of well over $1 billion in shared-office space company WeWork Cos, in what could be among the first deals from its new $100 billion technology fund, people familiar with the matter told The Wall Street Journal.

The seven-year-old company which investors had valued at around $17 billion last year, is among many richly-valued private companies that recently had held discussions with the Japanese investment giant.

SoftBank previously had earlier discussed an investment in WeWork before pulling out, according to two people familiar with the discussions. Some SoftBank executives had questioned whether WeWork was already overvalued, and a company in the business of office space was different from tech-focused investments.