WeWork Confirms the Acquisition of Meetup

WeWork has officially announced it is acquiring Meetup, the New York City-based community platform for organizing offline group meetings.

The terms of the deal haven’t yet been disclosed, but Crunchbase News reported it could be to the tune of $30 million.

Meetup has confirmed the acquisition in a blog post, clarifying that its leaders, mission, team, apps and website aren’t changing.

“When we started Meetup… We certainly didn’t imagine joining forces with one of the fastest growing companies in the world. And we had no way of predicting how badly the world would need Meetup in 2017,” the company wrote.

Meetup boasts 35 million members that have facilitated more than 300,000 meetings, and WeWork locations have become the fastest growing choice for where members are hosting their meetings.

WeWork buying Meetup is a logical move; more than 100,000 people have attended a Meetup event in a WeWork location this year, said WeWork’s CEO Adam Neumann.

“WeWork and Meetup have the opportunity to use technology to create new and innovative ways of bringing people together in person and foster greater community,” wrote Neumann in a blog post. He confirmed Meetup CEO Scott Heiferman will remain as chief executive as the two companies join.

Neither company specified what the new relationship will entail, but Neumann mused how technology is fostering new connections and forging real communities, pillars of both WeWork and Meetup.

“By harnessing technology to remove the barriers to human connection, Meetup is bringing people together all over the world… With Meetup, there’s even more opportunity to bring people together around the things that matter most to them,” he added.

In August, WeWork secured a massive $4.4 billion investment from SoftBank Group and the SoftBank Vision Fund to fuel the company’s Asia expansion. WeWork currently has 225 co-working spaces in 58 cities and 150,000 members.