Enterprise Memberships Fueled WeWork Revenue
WeWork Revenue, Memberships and Workstations
The mix shift toward enterprise was the core reason WeWork could hold revenue together during COVID. Big companies did not buy a single spare desk, they bought flexible blocks of space for teams, overflow offices, and hub and spoke setups, which gave WeWork longer commitments and more dependable payments than freelancers and small businesses. That made the business look less like daily desk rental and more like outsourced office capacity for large employers.
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Enterprise members grew from 25% of memberships in 2017 to 60% in 2020. Their average commitment length reached 23 months, which pulled overall new commitment length to 17 months and made revenue less volatile in a shutdown year.
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The operational difference was concrete. During the pandemic, nearly all enterprise customers kept paying while about half of SMB customers canceled, and WeWork signed 3.5M square feet with companies like Microsoft, Citigroup, Deloitte, Mastercard, and TikTok.
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This also improved WeWork’s position versus both landlords and smaller flex space operators. Enterprises could sign one master agreement across many cities instead of negotiating building by building, while WeWork’s global footprint and All Access product made it easier to support hybrid work at scale.
Going forward, the companies that win in flex office will be the ones that act like national office networks for enterprises, not local coworking shops. If hybrid work keeps pushing employers toward shorter, more distributed space commitments, enterprise mix should keep determining who gets occupancy, pricing power, and the right to expand with landlords.