Startups Fuel Coworking Surge Across Los Angeles

Coworking offices are booming across Los Angeles.

The Los Angeles region added 1.4 million square feet of coworking offices last year, 16 percent more than in 2024, L.A. Business First reported, citing a study by WeWork.

The jump in shared, flexible offices marked the nation’s third-largest gain, behind New York and Dallas-Fort Worth.

The WeWork study tracked more than 42,000 firms in 20 cities from 2023 through April. Its data draws on WeWork membership and occupancy along with metro coworking supply figures.

L.A. now has the nation’s second largest coworking market, with 10.3 million square feet across 457 locations. The region follows New York, with nearly 20 million square feet across 753 sites.

Another report, published last month by CoworkingCafe, pegged L.A.’s coworking footprint as the largest in the nation, with nearly 8 million square feet of coworking inventory spread across 351 locations. Some 35 percent of the market is controlled by five major companies.

The reason for the inventory gap between the CoworkingCafe and the WeWork reports isn’t clear.

Across the U.S., the coworking market grew 17 percent year-over-year, adding 1,300 locations to reach 9,140 office sites nationwide, WeWork found. The growth was concentrated in cities with the strongest business startup activity.

The national average coworking site early this year was nearly 18,000 square feet, according to a CoworkingCafe report. In Los Angeles, the average space is 22,055 square feet, trailing San Francisco at 25,530 square feet.

While coworking demand in San Francisco and New York lean heavily on artificial intelligence and finance, L.A.’s demand is spread across numerous industries, WeWork found. Local coworking offices are home to entertainment, technology, aerospace, consumer-brand, health-tech and clean-energy companies.

Since 2023, more than 6,500 startups have rented WeWork locations in Los Angeles, the second-highest number of startups nationwide. As of April, nearly 1,300 were active.

Across the region, WeWork operates 17 coworking locations in nearly 840,000 square feet of offices., accounting for 8 percent of the region’s coworking space. The New York-based firm exited bankruptcy in 2024, slashing $4 billion in debt, while adding an equity partner in Yardi Systems and revamping its C-suite with Cushman & Wakefield veteran John Santora.

– Dana Bartholomew