Short-term space rental company Breather has raised $60 million in equity financing in a round including la Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, and Singapore-based firms Temasek and Ascendas-Singbridge.
Since its inception five years ago, Montreal-based Breather said that it’s scaled to 10 cities globally, including New York City, San Francisco, Toronto, and London. The company operates over 500 spaces globally.
“We work with businesses of every size—from growing startups to leading enterprise organizations—to provide space solutions that scale to their needs,” said Julien Smith, founder and CEO of Breather. “Traditional real estate agreements can lead to large fixed costs and teams getting locked into a space that they might soon outgrow. Breather enables businesses to access the space they need when they need it, with the freedom to scale usage up or down when they want to. We’re excited to work with our new partners to bring that freedom to even more businesses worldwide.”
To date, the company has raised nearly $150 million from VC firms including Menlo Ventures, Valar Ventures, RRE Ventures, Slow Ventures, and Real Ventures. In December 2016, the company raised a $54 million Series C. In the past, it’s launched partnerships with real estate firms like Cushman & Wakefield with the goal of fuelling
“Breather is a young, innovative and fast-growing company with great potential on the international scene.” states Christian Dubé, executive vice-president of Québec at la Caisse. “Through its unique and innovative business model, Breather has demonstrated a unique capacity to lead within a rapidly transforming industry with a focus on technology and an ongoing focus to optimize yield management through machine learning.”