WeWork Cos. today announced its first acquisition since filing to go public: a New York-based startup called Spacious Inc. that provides co-working spaces.

Spacious has come up with a creative new spin on the traditional shared office. The startup partners with upscale restaurants that open in the evening and turns their dining rooms into coworking spaces during daytime. The restaurant operators gain a new revenue stream, while knowledge workers can book office space at often lower rates than what WeWork offers.

Spacious has partnered with more than two dozen hospitality establishments in New York and San Francisco since launching three years ago. It also picked up about $9 million in funding along the way from backers that include Netflix Inc. investor Redpoint Ventures.

The startup had an estimated valuation of $29.1 million as of May 2018, according to Pitchbook data cited by Business Insider. That might provide a general idea of how much WeWork paid to buy Spacious. WeWork didn’t disclose the financial terms of the deal, saying only that the startup’s team will join its ranks as part of the transaction. 

“Spacious team’s and real estate and operational expertise will help enable WeWork to continue to give our members access to the workspace they want, when they need it,” WeWork Chief Product Officer Chris Hill said in a statement.

The acquisition is WeWork’s first since it released the prospectus for its initial public offering two weeks ago. In the filing, the company reported a $904 million net loss for the first half of 2019 on revenues of $1.5 billion. WeWork’s sales in that period grew at about twice the rate of its losses on an annual basis, but the co-working giant still lacks a clear path to profitability.

Spacious is the latest in a string of strategic acquisitions that the company has made in recent years. Previously, it picked up user analytics startup Euclid Inc. and shelled out $100 million to buy Teem Inc., a Utah-based provider of cloud-based office management tools. 

Photo: WeWork