SoftBank Gives Startups Billions of Reasons to Hold Off IPOs

WeWork Cos. co-founder Miguel McKelvey a few years year ago brushed off the idea of an initial public offering, telling a small gathering in Napa Valley that the shared office-space company is “thinking about how to prolong that eventuality to a distant point in the future.”

Enter SoftBank Group Corp. , which is increasingly poised to help WeWork and numerous other multibillion-dollar startups in Silicon Valley stave off IPOs.