Post-WeWork, the Neumanns Are Still Billionaires. Whatever Happened to Their Philanthropy?

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In August 2019, WeWork cofounders Adam and Rebekah Neumann made an unusual philanthropic pledge. In a 220-page filing for an initial public offering, the couple said they would donate $1 billion to charity in the decade after the company went public. If they failed to do so, their voting power in the company would be halved.

Fast forward four and a half years. WeWork’s parent company filed for bankruptcy late last year, capping a precipitous fall that started with that IPO filing, which the company later withdrew, and Adam Neumann being forced out as CEO. The infamous meltdown has now been chronicled in books, podcasts, a documentary and a TV show.

The Chapter 11 filing came the week after another would-be mega-philanthropist, former effective altruism poster boy Sam Bankman-Fried, was convicted of stealing more than $8 billion from customers of his now-bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange, FTX, in what’s been called one of the biggest financial frauds on record. (He is expected to appeal the conviction.)

These two corporate implosions are reminders that funding promises tied to sky-high corporate aspirations are, at best, uncertain. At a time when public philanthropic pledges seem to be more common than ever, some degree of skepticism is warranted, even necessary. When made by founders whose companies benefit from their good publicity — and particularly by young men rapidly amassing huge fortunes — any related philanthropy benefits from a high level of transparency and examination.  

In the case of the Neumanns, that scrutiny is still warranted, as the couple emerged from WeWork’s collapse not as paupers, but as billionaires. According to Forbes, Adam Neumann still has an estimated $2.3 billion to his name. Not quite the $14 billion he once expected to gain from the IPO, but still more than nearly everyone on earth, not to mention many well-known philanthropists.

Some of that is from WeWork. Adam Neumann told the New York Times in 2021 he walked away with a billion-dollar exit package — specifically $291 million in cash, $578 million for selling back his WeWork shares and a $430 million non-recourse loan from WeWork’s main investor, SoftBank, according to Forbes. The 42-year-old has also founded a comeback company, Flow, which was valued at $1 billion last year in a $350 million investment from the high-profile venture capital firm Andreesen Horowitz. That capital infusion both exemplified his ability to woo investors and drew criticism about the second chances given white male tech leaders. Forbes states Adam has stakes in buildings worth more than $1 billion before debt and, according to Neumann's representatives, Flow owns more than 3,000 apartment units. He is even trying to buy WeWork (the company lived on without Neumann and went public via a merger at a much lower value, though it is now navigating bankruptcy).

In short, all public evidence suggests that the Neumanns still have the means to be big-time philanthropists. If they desired, the couple could technically give away a full $1 billion, the amount named in that now-defunct IPO’s charitable giving clause — and remain billionaires. With the hype and promise of WeWork behind them, do they still have such philanthropic aspirations? Well, it’s hard to tell. Here’s what we know. 

Were the Neumanns’ well intentioned but overambitious?

It’s possible to review Adam and Rebekah Neumann’s record and see a couple who truly cared about giving back, and were even pushing tech industry philanthropy into a whole new sphere. Instead of pledging to CNN’s cameras (see Jeff Bezos) or in a New York Times interview (Laurene Powell Jobs), they committed to giving away $1 billion as part of an IPO, essentially building charitable giving directly into any hypothetical fortune they’d amass if their company went public. 

That’s remarkably different from the tech donors of old, who started foundations decades after they found success in business, or from more recent industry winners, who embarked on philanthropy while perched atop newly minted fortunes. The Neumanns were pledging in anticipation of a presumed jackpot — albeit one that never materialized thanks to the implosion of said IPO. You might see it as a kind of leveling up of the 1% corporate pledge popularized, in differing forms, by leaders like Yvon Chouinard of Patagonia and Marc Benioff and Salesforce. 

That wasn’t their first step as mega donors, either, despite their relatively young ages. The couple had made a $1 million donation to the Be the Match Foundation, a bone marrow nonprofit, in 2017, after learning one of WeWork’s early employees needed a transplant. The gift earned them lavish praise in Fortune, and Be the Match have listed the couple among their “lifetime and legacy” supporters. 

The 2019 IPO filing also mentioned earlier philanthropic contributions. It said the couple had donated “over 15%” of past share sales to charity and had already contributed to conserving more than 20 million acres of tropical forest as part of their $1 billion pledge. The final page of the S-1 form even featured a picture of the region. 

Even after things came crashing down, philanthropy was on their minds. In 2020, about six months after Adam stepped down as CEO, the pair started a foundation: the Nazare Family Foundation. Adam cut a $50,000 check for its endowment that first year. 

WeFund? Or was philanthropy just another branding exercise?

The couple’s philanthropic record might alternatively be interpreted as simple self-promotion, particularly given that there’s not a lot of evidence of their donations beyond that bone marrow gift and assurances from Adam Neumann and his team. That makes it hard to pin down just how serious they were or are about philanthropy, even as Adam’s entrepreneurial career marches on. 

Take the past contributions mentioned in the IPO. The document did not identify the rainforest or conservation groups the Neumanns had supported. Nor did it indicate where the 15% share of sales were donated. The Wall Street Journal was also unable to identify specific recipients.

It’s also unclear just how legally binding their IPO promise would have been had the offering materialized. Fast Company reported at the time that the pledge “isn’t as meaningful as it looks” because even if the Neumanns did not follow through, they would not risk losing control of the company.

As for their foundation, it made a single grant: a $1,000 check to the Be the Match Foundation, according to an IRS filing. Nazare is now defunct and never filed another report with the IRS. The couple are not on any other nonprofit boards, based on public record searches.

A spokesperson for Adam Neumman also declined to share any details about their giving, other than the following statement: “The Neumanns generally make their contributions anonymously and they have contributed quite substantially more funds than you cite to philanthropic causes, including the land conservation and medical organizations you asked about.” 

How should we judge the Neummans as philanthropists?

Perhaps the Neumanns were eager to set a new model of what giving back by tech billionaires could look like, but WeWork’s collapse led them to reconsider their very public approach. Adam Neumann has publicly suggested as much, saying more giving is taking place out of sight, both by him and the company’s third cofounder, Miguel McKelvey, who made his own pledge in that long-ago IPO filing. 

“Miguel and I, actually, over the past few months, have done multiple things, but not stuff that we feel obligated to share,” he told the New York Times in a 2021 interview, the first he did after leaving WeWork. “We do a tremendous amount of giveback. And there’s a lot more in store [on] that topic, but it’s all done quietly.”

Or maybe the lack of detail around their giving means that not a lot of it is happening. Anonymous giving may be common, even required by some religions, but there’s no way to evaluate the couple’s philanthropic assertions without some level of transparency.

We could write off this whole topic as part of the WeWork hangover. The company is now seen as a “symbol of venture capital excess,” as the New York Times recently put it. Adam is now known for selling several “We”-related trademarks to WeWork through a holding company while he was serving as CEO (only to later forgo payment) and, according to The Cult of We, smoking so much pot on a private jet that the flight crew reached for their oxygen masks. Whatever reputational gains the Neumanns got from their IPO’s $1 billion pledge were obliterated by WeWork’s dramatic decline. 

Yet this is a couple in their 40s, and Forbes them ranks among the richest people on the planet. They’re no Bloomberg or Buffett, but as of this writing, Forbes puts Adam at 1,368 on its list, placing the couple comfortably within the 0.000001%. The Neumanns still have decades to show that the philanthropic intentions they once signaled reflected their true values and desire to give back, not just bluster that was discarded when things went south. There’s no need to make a big fuss about it, no need for TV cameras or press releases. They just need to be public about what they've donated to, and how much.

Correction (March 25, 2024): A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that Adam Neumann trademarked the word "We" and sold the rights to his company. It has been updated to reflect that an entity controlled by Neumann held the rights to several trademarks containing the word "We," and Neumman ultimately declined to receive payment.