Maybe the writing was always on the wall, in a soft gradient, pastel to warm, that Adam Neumann’s second act would unfold in a condo compound on the outskirts of Northern Riyadh.
Granted, it wasn’t immediately obvious in the haze that followed WeWork’s collapse, a period defined by Gulfstream flights, tequila-soaked all-hands, and the now-infamous $5.9 million “We” trademark sale, as Neumann was recast as the poster child for late-cycle excess, with the company’s $47 billion valuation vanishing almost overnight, its IPO pulled, and a SoftBank rescue ultimately ending in a bankruptcy-court exit where a Yardi Systems affiliate took control with a $337 million investment, valuing the restructured company at a fraction of its former peak.
Still, Silicon Valley’s memory proved short, and barely three years after his ouster, Andreessen Horowitz quietly cut a $350 million seed cheque – the largest in the firm’s history at the time – handing Neumann another shot at “reinventing real estate” through a venture he now calls Flow, reportedly valuing the company at $1 billion before it had even launched.
The moment it became clear that Flow was not just a redemption arc but a geopolitical pivot came in March 2023, when Neumann appeared on stage at a PIF-backed FII Priority summit in Miami alongside Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, where all three lavished praise on Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 and, more pointedly, on Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, casting his leadership in terms anyone familiar with Paul Graham’s “founder-mode” ethos would recognise.
Ben Horowitz, Marc Andreesen and Adam Neumann on-stage at the FII Priority Summit that took place in Miami on March 30 and 31, 2023.
“Saudi has a founder,” Horowitz said. “You don’t call him a founder. You call him His Royal Highness.”
Neumann echoed the sentiment, saying the Kingdom “almost feels like a startup,” even teasing that Flow might one day expand there.
It wasn’t just talk. A year later, Flow was up and running in Riyadh under Fawaz Farooqi, a stalwart of the Kingdom’s transformation drive. As the first CEO of the National Transformation Program, Farooqi had revamped it into an execution-focused engine, launched specialised offshoots like Quality of Life, and helped set up the General Entertainment Authority.
Farooqi had sat in the Miami audience that day. Armed with a decade of “quality-of-life” wins and board seats across PIF-backed entities, he gave Flow instant credibility: with regulators, city planners and, crucially, capital allocators.
Fresh off a $100 million raise in April 2025, at a valuation of roughly $2.5 billion, with a16z doubling down, it feels like the moment to put this “Saudi start-up” under the microscope.
So: What exactly is Flow? What persuaded a16z to hand Neumann a $350 million seed cheque? Why Saudi, and what kind of traction are we talking about? How did Flow launch as a fully local company in just 60 days, and how did it secure $293 million from Saudi family investors to do it?
Is this simply WeLive 2.0 in a thobe, or something more durable? And just how big is the professionally managed build-to-rent opportunity in the Kingdom.
What exactly is Flow?
It’s a spiritual successor to WeWork, but this time, for how people live, not just how they work…
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