WeWork
A $47 billion company that rented desks.
CAUSE OF DEATH: Not dead. Went bankrupt in 2023 and crawled back out in 2024.
WeWork sublet office space by the desk and convinced SoftBank it was worth $47 billion. It lost over $2 billion in 2018, the same year it bought a private jet for more than $60 million. It had $47 billion in lease obligations against $4 billion in lease commitments. An entity owned by the founder and his co-founders charged WeWork $5.9 million for the word "We." He returned it in September 2019. When the IPO collapsed in 2019, he received close to $1.7 billion to leave the board. It had to warn clients that about 1,600 phone booths were tainted with formaldehyde. It filed for bankruptcy on November 6, 2023 and emerged in May 2024. Failure has never paid better.