Whatnot Closes $545 Million Series G, Valuation Doubles to $20 Billion
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Live shopping platform Whatnot has raised $545 million in a Series G round, nearly doubling its valuation to $20 billion in under a year. The company says the funding will go toward helping its sellers grow, as buyer numbers double and weekly signups top 650,000.
Live shopping platform Whatnot announced Friday it has raised $545 million in a Series G funding round, taking its valuation to $20 billion. The figure is nearly double the $11.5 billion the company was valued at after its Series F round last October.
The round was led by ICONIQ Growth, Lightspeed Venture Partners and Avra. New investors Kleiner Perkins and Wellington Management also joined, alongside existing backers Andreessen Horowitz, DST Global, CapitalG, Bond, Greycroft and Y Combinator. CapitalG, Alphabet’s investment arm, has now led three of Whatnot’s funding rounds since its Series C in 2021.
Whatnot said the money will go toward marketing to attract new buyers, trust and safety measures, expansion into new categories and markets, and new tools – including AI-assisted features – meant to reduce administrative work for sellers.
The company has now raised roughly $1.5 billion since it was founded in 2019.
Growth figures
Whatnot said it had already surpassed its full 2025 gross merchandise volume of more than $8 billion by the middle of 2026. Live sales exceeded $8 billion in 2025, more than double the prior year, with over 20 million accounts created during that period.
Buyers on the platform have more than doubled over the past year, and the company said more than 650,000 new people join Whatnot each week. The number of sellers who have surpassed $1 million in lifetime sales has more than doubled in the past year, and the share of sellers earning a full-time income on the platform has risen by 25%.
Whatnot estimates the livestream shopping market is worth more than $22 billion and says it holds about 60% of it.
Background
Whatnot was founded in 2019 around livestreamed sales of collectibles such as trading cards and sneakers. It has since expanded into hundreds of categories, including designer handbags, electronics and groceries, and now operates in the US, UK and across Europe. The company entered the German market a little over two years ago.
Other large technology companies have tried and failed to establish live shopping in Western markets. Facebook and Instagram both discontinued their live shopping features in 2023, even as the format remains a major sales channel in China through platforms such as Taobao Live.
The round is notable for the venture capital climate it was raised in, where the large majority of major funding rounds this year have gone to AI labs and infrastructure companies rather than consumer commerce platforms.
What’s next
Some investors and analysts have pointed to the involvement of Wellington Management, a public-markets asset manager, as a signal the company could be preparing for a future stock market listing, since such investors typically join private rounds when positioning for a future liquidity event.
In its announcement, Whatnot said the funding is intended for the sellers who built the platform, framing the round as an investment in the people who go live rather than the company itself.
