Upflex Gets $30M to Build a Virtual Network of Flex Space Providers

Hybrid workplace platform vendor Upflex announced this week a $30 million Series-A fundraising round led by WeWork and including Newmark, Cushman & Wakefield, Ecosystem Integrity Fund, and others. The company says that the new round brings its total funding to $34.1 million.

The funds would go to expanding the organization and technology, the company said. 

There’s been plenty of activity in the flex space of late, whether Flex space operator Industrious making two acquisitions for a total of $100 million earlier this month or the same firm getting another $100 million stake from CBRE. Last fall, WeWork tapped JLL to market flex space in 38 US locations.

Upflex’s play is different. It originally started as a coworking aggregator in 2018 but turned its sites to becoming a common platform that can interconnect different suppliers and provide a single way for users to manage their bookings. In 2020, Colliers launched its online platform for access to thousands of on-demand workspaces across 70 countries. The company developed its offering using technology from Upflex.

They [Upflex] have the technology, and they have the network,” Francesco De Camilli, head of Flexible Workspace Consulting, Americas at Colliers International, said at the time. “Every supplier on the network has agreed to a partnership with Upflex to offer inventory to be booked on demand.”

Back in February 2022, WeWork and Upflex announced they were partnering to create a global network of 5,500 locations. WeWork and its members would gain additional access to Upflex’s portfolio of over 4,800 third-party spaces, provided by over 700 flex space operators across 80 countries.

Part of the deal was WeWork’s agreement to take part in the Series-A round that just completed. WeWork would be the exclusive seller of Upflex inventory to its own members; Upflex would be the exclusive coworking aggregator of WeWork’s global inventory, the first time WeWork allowed bookings from a third-party platform.

Upflex makes the argument that it provides additional exposure for the portfolios of flex space partners while letting them continue managing their own inventory without additional capital investment. That would explain the attraction of what is called in technical circles software as a service, or SaaS. Such a cloud-based model can provide capabilities to users like the flex space partners and enable the back-and-forth movement of data that would make an interconnected broader market of offerings possible.

At this point, Upflex claims more than 700 flex space operators and access to more than 6,000 bookable locations across 900 cities in 80 countries.