Coworking Is Going Corporate To Fuel Its Next Wave Of Growth

The total number of U.S. coworking locations declined in the second quarter, the first time that has happened since at least 2023, according to CoworkingCafe. 

A stronger first quarter has kept the total number of new locations in 2025 in positive territory, but coworking operators have gone from expanding at breakneck speed to a snail's pace. Growth has slowed, but there are early signs that rising demand from corporate clients could fuel coworking’s next leap forward.  

“We've already made up for the Q2 reduction in count alone in Q3, from what we've seen from openings,” said Peter Kolaczynski, the director of research at Yardi, which owns flexible space booking website CoworkingCafe and a majority stake in WeWork. 

The coworking sector hasn’t been immune to the macroeconomic waves undulating from the trade war being waged from the White House. The biggest operators pressed pause on expansion plans while they waited for more solid ground on which to transact, and smaller operators have been squeezed by rising costs, Kolaczynski said. 

Since 2023, more than 1,500 new coworking locations totaling 21M SF of office space have opened their doors across the U.S, bringing the sector’s total U.S. footprint to 141M SF. But the pace of expansion has slowed considerably after an explosive 2024. 

“You saw a little bit of a pause in Q2 — and coworking wouldn't be the only industry that you saw that in — just kind of everyone taking a look around, asking, ‘What's going on? How are we feeling?’” Kolaczynski said. 

As coworking providers emerge from the economic woods — or, like a growing number of CRE firms, get comfortable transacting inside them — corporate occupiers with thousands of employees are increasingly driving the sector’s growth. Amid economic uncertainty, scalability, flexibility and cost controls have become the cornerstones of many postpandemic occupancy strategies. 

The shift is already appearing in the data. The 53 net new coworking locations to open in the first half added more than 450K SF of total space to U.S. coworking inventory than the 88 new locations that opened during the same period a year earlier.

Most of that growth can be attributed to the sector’s movement into the suburbs, where larger footprints are standard, Kolaczynski said. The push into secondary and tertiary markets is meant to attract both new single users and corporate partners looking for a place where their employees might be less bothered about returning to the office five days a week. 

“The vast majority of the uptick has been suburban locations opening and the closing of urban locations,” Kolaczynski said. “There’s been a lot of spread with the smaller footprints outward to bring the office to the employees.”

As companies wage the return-to-office war with their employees, occupier strategies have fundamentally shifted to increasingly include deals with coworking operators to provide scale and presence in a broad set of markets. 

Regus, which is owned by Swiss firm International Workplace Group, is the largest and fastest-growing coworking platform in the U.S. today. The company, which added 68 locations in the second quarter for a total of 920, has always targeted a corporate client base and is more known for its individual office and conference room offerings as opposed to large, open hot desking layouts. 

CBRE’s acquisition of Industrious at an $800M valuation in January was framed by executives as additive to its brokerage platform, as they saw more corporate users integrating coworking into their space strategy. 

A year after its messy bankruptcy, WeWork is profitable and expanding, including a series of high-profile partnerships with Amazon, like a June deal to lease 141K SF on behalf of the tech giant in Silicon Valley.  

In July, WeWork inked its first new traditional coworking lease in New York City since 2019.

“It’s growing on both ends,” said Laura Kozelouzek, CEO of Quest Workspaces, a flexible office provider with 14 locations focused in South Florida. “The smaller user still has a need, but there are also companies looking to put 200 people in a flexible term.”

Amazon signed and then expanded a traditional lease in Miami’s hip Wynwood neighborhood in June, but it has been leveraging coworking space in the city for hundreds of employees since at least 2023, including with Quest Workspaces. 

Kozelouzek expanded Quest’s footprint at offices in Boca Raton and Palm Beach last year to keep up with demand. 

“If we have a successful location with one floor, then whenever we can, we always add space,” Kozelouzek said.

The sector is positioned for growth regardless of which way the economic winds blow, Kolaczynski and Kozelouzek said. The flexibility baked into coworking solutions gives corporate users the runway to quickly grow without a long-term commitment, which occupiers continue to avoid. 

“Larger enterprise clients are realizing more and more the value of not locking into long terms, especially as they're trying to sort through who's coming back to work and who's not,” Kozelouzek said. “Uncertainty is good for coworking. I've seen it play out through recessions time and time again.”

UPDATE, AUG. 19, 10:15 A.M. ET: This story has been updated to reflect slightly revised data from CoworkingCafe.