Knotel Closes $60M in Funding Led by Norwest Venture Partners
The flexible workspace provider and WeWork competitor adds Norwest's managing partner to its board of directors.
NEW YORK CITY—Knotel, the New York City-based provider of custom workplaces with flexible terms, has closed a $60 million round of funding led by Norwest Venture Partners. As part of the transaction, Jeff Crowe, the managing partner of Norwest, has joined Knotel’s board of directors.
Crowe comments that agile workspaces are the future of corporate offices. “The Knotel team has the innovation and drive to transform the commercial real estate world towards this vision of flexibility, speed and transparency,” he says.
“Knotel is just getting started. The journey transforming the immense global category of office will be all about team. Today we add a superstar,” says Amol Sarva, co-founder and CEO of Knotel.
This latest round of financing brings Knotel’s total backing to $160 million. Existing investors including Newmark Knight Frank and Bloomberg Beta also participated in the round. Norwest has backed other high-profile companies such as Opendoor, Uber, Spotify and Jet. Knotel asserts that the investment firm will bring its experience to help accelerate the flexible workspace provider’s growth. The company plans to use the additional funding to expand in current core and new markets, targeting mid-market and enterprise businesses. Its previous $25 million Series A round in 2017 also included investors Rocket Internet and 500 Startups.
The new funding comes as Knotel continues its brisk pace of expansion. The company operates nearly 100 locations in New York, San Francisco, London and Berlin, and has more than doubled its real estate footprint in the past six months to a current total of over 1.7 million square feet. More than 200 companies including vast corporations such as Omnicom, Netflix, and Daimler currently use Knotel spaces.