Adam Neumann, WeWork’s founder and former chief executive, will walk away from the company with $1.7 billion as key investor Softbank takes over and scrambles to save WeWork from bankruptcy, the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday.

The iconoclastic Neumann, who helped propel WeWork to an eye-popping $47 billion valuation, was listed as a risk factor in the company's prospectus because his leadership and vision were considered essential to the company's success. But in a few short weeks, Neumann has become the opposite in the eyes of investors.

After reports of Neumann's troubling behavior and conflicts of interest, Neumann was forced to step down as CEO in late September. Now, he'll exit the company almost entirely, stepping down as chairman of the board but maintaining a stake in WeWork.

Softbank will give Neumann $1 billion for his shares, along with a $185 million consulting fee and $500 million in credit to help repay a loan facility, according to reporting from the Wall Street Journal.

WeWork's spectacular fall is the latest high-profile failure for a tech unicorn in a year filled with IPO flops, including from giants like Uber, Lyft and Peloton. Once heralded for its hip take on shared office space, WeWork has fallen far and fast and would run out of money by November without new financing, CNBC reported. Japanese conglomerate Softbank will try to arrest the company's free fall as it is expected to take over Tuesday in a deal that would value the company at roughly $8 billion, the Journal reported. That's just a fraction of WeWork's highest valuation (which Neumann once said was based more on "energy and spirituality" than revenue) and less than half of what it had expected from its bungled IPO.

WeWork and Softbank did not immediately respond to requests for comment from The Washington Post.

WeWork's prospectus, which was filed in August, rapidly deflated the company's image when it revealed that the company was hemorrhaging money, having lost more than $900 million in the first six months of 2019. It has never turned a profit.

The filing also revealed Neumann had borrowed hundreds of millions against his stock holdings and holds stakes in multiple companies that own properties leased to WeWork, prompting allegations of self-dealing that are worrisome to investors. Neumann was even paid nearly $6 million by WeWork for the trademark rights to the word "We" during the company's rebranding. (He later paid the money back, the company said in an updated filing.)

The 40-year-old Neumann easily fit the bill of Silicon Valley disrupter. A towering 6-foot-5, he was known for walking around the office barefoot and encouraging the free flow of tequila. His goals were wide-ranging and unbounded by reality - becoming the world's first trillionaire, taking WeWork to Mars, living forever, being Israel's prime minister or "president of the world," according to reporting from the Journal.

Neumann moved to the United States in 2001 after a stint in the Israeli navy and studied business at Baruch College in New York City. His last business venture before founding WeWork was a failed baby clothes company called Krawlers that made pants with knee pads for cushier crawling. In 2008, Neumann teamed up with an architect, Miguel McKelvey, to lease vacant space in the building they worked in and turn it into a hip, eco-friendly co-working space. The business grew into WeWork, which has pegged its brand to the notion that work is the axis of life.