The CEO of live shopping app Whatnot on its $265 million fundraising haul and expansion plans
Whatnot
- Whatnot closed a fresh $265 million Series E round at a roughly $5 billion valuation.
- CEO Grant LaFontaine plans to use the funds to add new features for sellers and enter new countries.
- Whatnot is betting that live shopping will eventually be commonplace in the US and other markets.
Investors are betting big that live shopping is here to stay.
Livestream app Whatnot announced on Wednesday that it closed a $265 million Series E funding round, bringing its valuation to around $5 billion.
The round was co-led by Greycroft, DST Global, and Avra Capital, with participation from Lightspeed Venture Partners, Durable Capital Partners, and Andreessen Horowitz, among others.
Whatnot hosts livestreams across categories including fashion, collectibles like sports cards and sneakers, and niche items like vinyl records and "storage unit finds." It makes money by taking a cut of the sales on its platform, which operates in North America and Europe.
Launched in 2019, Whatnot was an early entrant in the US in the live shopping category. Live selling drives hundreds of billions in annual sales in Asia but has been slower to gain adoption in other markets. The category has recently picked up steam in the US, driven in part by the popularity of TikTok Shop, which helped consumers get accustomed to buying from social media and livestreams.
"As consumers get used to purchasing in that format, as sellers start to build better businesses around it and then unlock really good inventory around it, adoption is just going to continue to increase," Whatnot CEO Grant LaFontaine told Business Insider.
Whatnot said it crossed $3 billion in livestream sales last year, roughly double what it pulled in for 2023.
In 2025, Whatnot also stands to benefit if TikTok, one of its biggest competitors, is banned in the US as mandated by a divestment law.
Whatnot's expansion plans in 2025
Whatnot plans to use its new quarter-of-a-billion dollars in funding for marketing, product, and engineering, as well as to support its expansion into new markets like Australia, LaFontaine said.
On the product side, the company wants to improve its merchant tools, including analytics and inventory management, and introduce new selling formats that could make livestreams more effective, he said. It's also investing in improving customer support. It plans to launch more product categories and double down on goods that performed well last year, such as golf items, as well.
Heading into 2025, LaFontaine said he expects the live-shopping phenomenon to lead to the creation of a new class of e-commerce content creators, a trend TikTok has also been driving.
"Just because you're entertaining on YouTube doesn't mean you have all the skills to be good at Whatnot," he said. "Live and social commerce will tend to create a new wave of its own influencers."
Whatnot said it's raised about $746 million in funding since its 2019 launch.