Whatnot Raises $545 Million At $20 Billion Valuation
Whatnot has raised $545 million in Series G funding at a $20 billion valuation, nearly doubling its value in less than a year as the live shopping marketplace continues to post rapid growth in buyers, sellers and transaction volume.
The round was led by ICONIQ, Lightspeed and Avra, with new investors including Kleiner Perkins, Wellington Management and Standard Capital joining existing backers Andreessen Horowitz, Bond, DST Global, Greycroft, Y Combinator and CapitalG.
The new valuation is another major step up for Whatnot, which was valued at roughly $5 billion after raising $265 million in January 2025, then jumped to $11.5 billion with a $225 million Series F round last October.
Whatnot surpassed $3 billion in livestream sales in 2024, more than doubling the previous year, before growing to more than $8 billion in live GMV in 2025.
The company now says sellers generated more sales in the first half of 2026 than they did during all of 2025.
More than 650,000 people are joining the platform each week, according to the Series G announcement, while the number of sellers who have crossed $1 million in lifetime sales has more than doubled over the last year.
Whatnot also crossed one billion total orders in June. Chief Executive Officer Grant LaFontaine told Bloomberg the company expects transaction volume to double in 2026, while sellers are now creating more than five million new listings per day.
Whatnot has also continued expanding beyond the trading cards and collectibles categories that built its early business with more than 35 new categories added last year, another 45 in the first half of 2026, and fashion becoming its largest category by order volume.
Cross-category purchasing has also increased 170% year over year. Whatnot says the new funding will be used to attract more buyers, expand into new categories and markets, build seller tools and increase investment in Trust and Safety.
Last month, Whatnot acquired machine learning company Shaped, bringing founder Tullie Murrell and nearly a dozen engineers and researchers into a new applied AI research group. The initial focus includes search, recommendations and marketplace personalization.
Whatnot says it now has nearly 60% of the live shopping market across North America and Europe, but competitors are spending heavily to catch up.
eBay says eBay Live GMV has grown roughly seven to eight times year over year as it adds categories and expands internationally.
The company has not disclosed actual Live GMV, transaction volume or buyer and seller counts, making direct comparisons with Whatnot difficult, particularly as eBay has added five new markets over the last year.
Liz Morton
StockX officially launched StockX Live for US iOS users in July, initially focusing on sneakers, apparel, trading cards and collectibles. Those categories overlap heavily with Whatnot, with StockX offering $1 shipping through August and waiving seller fees through September to drive early adoption.
Liz Morton
Fanatics Live continues to compete in sports cards and collectibles, while TikTok Shop offers livestream shopping to its much larger social audience, and Poshmark continues to build Posh Shows around its fashion-focused marketplace.
Liz Morton
Whatnot is also facing scrutiny over rapid-fire auctions and randomized card breaks.
Recent reporting from the Wall Street Journal has highlighted buyers who say they accumulated significant debt through rapid-fire auctions and breaks, including some who drained savings or maxed out credit cards.
Whatnot says addiction and overspending have not registered as significant problems in its internal or external data. The company has introduced optional spending limits, watch-time controls and other tools intended to give users more control over purchasing.
The company is also facing more than 70 arbitration demands brought by attorney Paul Lesko on behalf of users who allege some randomized card breaks amount to illegal lotteries.
Liz Morton
Whatnot disputes the allegations, saying gambling is prohibited on the platform and that card breaks are a longstanding collecting format. Its current policy requires every buyer in a break to receive at least one card.
Whatnot has also faced scrutiny over shill bidding, which the company recently said has fallen nearly 80% over six months following expanded detection and enforcement, with user reports down 45%.
As Value Added Resource previously reported, the company did not provide the underlying totals or clearly define what the 80% decline represents, making the scale of that improvement difficult to independently assess.
Liz Morton
Whatnot says its Trust and Safety team more than doubled in size last year and is now its largest function.
Bloomberg now estimates co-founders Grant LaFontaine and Logan Head's stakes in Whatnot are worth more than $2.8 billion each.
