Whatnot Raises $545 Million at a $20 Billion Valuation
Whatnot (whatnot.com) has closed a $545 million Series G at a $20 billion valuation, the livestream shopping marketplace said Friday. ICONIQ, Lightspeed and Avra led the round, which values the company at nearly twice the $11.5 billion it carried after its $225 million Series F in October 2025.
Kleiner Perkins, Wellington Management and Standard Capital invested for the first time. Returning backers include Andreessen Horowitz, Bond, DST Global, Greycroft, Y Combinator and Alphabet's CapitalG, which has led three earlier rounds going back to the 2021 Series C.
Whatnot runs live video shows where sellers auction and sell items in real time, taking a cut of each transaction. Founded in 2019 by Grant LaFontaine and Logan Head, the company started with collectibles and now spans hundreds of categories including trading cards, sneakers, vinyl, designer handbags and fresh food, with operations across North America and Europe.
The company says more than 650,000 people are joining the platform each week and that its buyer base has more than doubled over the past year. Sellers passed $8 billion in gross merchandise volume in the first half of 2026, more than they moved in all of 2025, and Whatnot told Inc. it expects to clear $1 billion in annual revenue this year. Live commerce is a market Whatnot pegs at more than $22 billion, of which it claims roughly 60%.
"This investment allows us to build better tools, bring AI to more parts of the selling experience, help sellers reach more buyers, expand into new markets, and continue building the world's biggest and most trusted marketplace."
Grant LaFontaine, Founder and CEO of WhatnotPart of that AI work arrived through acquisition. In July, Whatnot bought Shaped, a machine learning company building real-time recommendation and search systems, with founder Tullie Murrell taking over a new applied AI research group. Ranking is a harder problem in live commerce than in conventional e-commerce, where catalogs sit still: auctions on Whatnot can end in minutes, and inventory changes while a show is running.
LaFontaine said the capital will also go toward seller tools, additional categories and markets, and trust and safety work, which the company treats as the mechanism for turning first-time buyers into repeat ones.