Office sharing firm WeWork has officially opened its doors in Dublin with the Iveagh Court building the first of its properties in the city.
The building, which is located on Harcourt Road, is already full, with a mixture of start-ups, small enterprises and firms such as Twillio, KIND bars and Microsoft all taking space among the company's five floors. Iveagh Court has capacity for 1,000 people.
WeWork offers a mixture of hot-desks, private meeting rooms and communal facilities to members.
The Dublin building is set to be officially opened by Minister for Education Richard Bruton.
WeWork's general manager for UK and Ireland Leni Zneimer said Iveagh Court would also accommodate WeWork members from other regions who may be travelling in the area. WeWork's model gives its members access to every WeWork facility, allowing them to book desk space in whatever city they need it.
WeWork now has offices in 74 cities and 22 countries around the world, including New York, Paris and Amsterdam.
Two more buildings are set to open in the near future in Dublin, at George’s Dock and Dublin Landings. Ms Zneimer said the company’s model was to focus on building a strong network within cities in which it operates, but didn’t rule out expanding to other Irish locations at some point in the future.
She said part of the company’s reasons for opening in Dublin was due to the ecosystem of tech companies located here, including major multinationals.
Dublin may also see the company Flatiron School, which offers coding courses both in person and online, come to the city in the future. Although there are no firm plans for an Irish launch yet, WeWork is opening its first location for the school outside the US, with the London Flatiron School set to open this summer.
WeWork was founded by Miguel McKelvey and Adam Neumann in New York City in 2010. It now has a total of 248,000 members worldwide, with more than 1,000 enterprise members including HSBC, Salesforce, Spotify, LinkedIn and Samsung all taking space in its offices.
