Cameron Lamming, an executive at property developer RAR Hospitality, knew he was taking a risk when he hired Katerra, a construction startup without much of a track record, to design and build a new hotel in San Diego. But Katerra had recently raised nearly $1 billion from SoftBank’s Vision Fund, and the startup estimated it could build RAR’s latest project in half the time as ...

At a WeWork executive offsite meeting last year, Adam Neumann tried to fire up his lieutenants by invoking the company’s largest benefactor, SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son. Neumann pointed to Son’s audacious goal for WeWork: a $1 trillion valuation. WeWork could get there, Neumann said, by thinking bigger.

The eye-popping target was typical for both Neumann and Son, who shared a ...

Airbnb’s operating loss more than doubled in the first quarter to $306 million from the year-earlier period, previously undisclosed financial data shows, a result in part of a sharply increased investment in marketing. While that spending could bring in a lot of new business, prospective investors could be unnerved if subsequent quarters show similar losses. That could pose an issue for ...

WeWork co-CEO Artie Minson apologized to employees Thursday for the controversies that have roiled the company in recent weeks and for the layoffs ahead. He said he knows what it is like to lose a job in a corporate restructuring. “Actually, in a very public way—cover of the Wall Street Journal way,” he said, an apparent reference to his 2013 ouster as AOL chief operating ...

Travis Kalanick is trying again in China. The former Uber CEO’s latest startup, kitchen-rental firm CloudKitchens, has quietly acquired six Chinese startups this year as he looks to expand the business into a global leader.

Earlier this year, Kalanick bought a Shanghai-based startup called Jike Alliance, one of the leading players in China’s kitchen-rental market, based on its ...