Adam Neumann's Apartment Startup Lands $350M Investment From Andreessen Horowitz

Venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, known for its early investments in the likes of Facebook and Airbnb, invested in former WeWork CEO Adam Neumann's latest company, a residential real estate entity known as Flow.

The VC firm announced the investment in a blog posting by General Partner Marc Andreessen lauding Neumann's talents as an entrepreneur, but didn't offer a dollar amount indicating the size of the investment.

The New York Times, citing sources close to the deal, put the investment at $350M, which would give Flow unicorn status — valuation of $1B or more — even before it opens for business.

The investment is also the largest amount the Menlo Park, California-based Andreessen Horowitz, also known as a16z, has ever put into a single round of funding for a company, the NYT added, characterizing the VC firm as "royalty among early-stage investors."

Though Flow is described as a residential real estate company, its business model isn't clear. Neumann has told friends and associates that he wants to build a company to shake up the rental-housing industry, the Wall Street Journal reported in January.

Since being ousted from WeWork in 2019 in the wake of a botched initial public offering and other stories of erratic management, Neumann has acquired about 4,000 apartment units in Florida, Georgia and Tennessee, valued at about $1B. When the company opens next year, Flow will reportedly own and operate Neumann's properties and offer its services to third parties.

"For all the energy put into covering the story, it’s often under-appreciated that only one person has fundamentally redesigned the office experience and led a paradigm-changing global company in the process: Adam Neumann," Andreessen wrote.

Andreessen also said that dealing with the U.S. housing crisis requires "combining community-driven, experience-centric service with the latest technology in a way that has never been done before."