Adam Neumann

You might at first think the “WeWork guy,” Adam Neumann, would have trouble finding investment for any new project ever since his co-working space company blew up in spectacular fashion back in 2019.

Well, earlier this year, Neuman put himself back in the public eye as the biggest investorfor a company called Flowcarbon. What does Flowcarbon do, exactly? It turns carbon credits (created by government-sponsored carbon offset projects) into tokens that can be sold via a blockchain. This, the company says, makes them more transparent, cheaper, and easier to manage.

Despite the highfalutin ideals, carbon offsets are a routine joke for most environmentalists, as they often involve planting trees in foreign countries to mitigate carbon released in the atmosphere thousands of miles away. Even John Oliver took carbon credits to task in a recent episode. Of course, pointing out that the biggest crypto tokens are massively wasteful both in terms of energy and resources might make you seem even more of a downer for a project such as this.

Still, despite the naysayers, Flowcarbon received $70 million in its latest round of funding from big-name crypto investors like Marc Andreessen and his firm a16z.

And even with his past failure, Neumann is still big into real estate. His new goal is to “disrupt” the real estate market with a company called Flow. It’s received a massive amount of investment—nearly $1 billion in valuation from companies like a16z. And guess what? It will apparently have a crypto wallet tied to it, according to Forbes. Though you won’t be able to pay rent with crypto, it would work like any other crypto wallet, a Flow spokesperson told the outlet. Still, a separate report from Forbes showed that Neumann’s description for the company is eerily similar to another company he previously invested in. Neumann’s people have denied they’ll be true competitors.