Whoop to double headquarters size ahead of IPO
Whoop, a Boston company that makes wearable fitness trackers, plans to double the size of its Kenmore Square headquarters ahead of going public, its chief executive said this week.
Chief executive Will Ahmed said in an interview with Bloomberg published Wednesday that he expects the initial public offering to come in around 18 months. The company plans to lease 107,000 square feet of office space next to its existing headquarters, an expansion that “can accommodate 1,000 employees,” Bloomberg reported.
Whoop garnered a valuation of $10.1 billion in March.
“It’s hard to know at an early stage if a company is great, but you want to create an environment where they can continue to flourish,” Ahmed told Bloomberg.
A Whoop spokesperson declined to comment beyond the Bloomberg article.
Whoop opened a 121,000-square-foot headquarters in the heart of Boston’s Kenmore Square three years ago. The company has steadily grown in valuation since launching in 2012, and earlier this year announced plans to hire 600 more employees in 2026, on top of its existing 800-odd workers. Bloomberg reported that Whoop has so far made almost 400 hires this year, more than 70 percent of which were Boston-based roles.
Whoop’s headquarters sign, where the company name is spelled out in all-caps white letters facing Kenmore Square, for years blocked the city’s famed CITGO sign. Suffolk Construction crews have demolished and are in the midst of replacing the historic CITGO sign 30 feet higher than its prior home, a move that should be complete by mid-November.
Boston biotech AI Proteins earlier this year leased 40,000 square feet at 660 Commonwealth Ave., a building that’s part of Related Beal’s 471,000-square-foot One Kenmore Square redevelopment of former Boston University buildings.
“We are committed to creating spaces that inspire innovation and foster growth for companies across Boston’s life science and technology sectors,” Alex Provost, the company’s development vice president, said in a release earlier this year.
Whoop’s latest fundraising round came in at a cool $575 million, and the company’s most recent investors include the Qatar Investment Authority and Macquarie Capital. The company’s Boston employees are expected to be in the office four days a week, Ahmed told Bloomberg.
Catherine Carlock can be reached at catherine.carlock@globe.com. Follow her @bycathcarlock.
