Livestream shopping platform Whatnot raised $265 million at a nearly $5 billion valuation in a round led by Greycroft, DST Global and Avra.
Whatnot, a competitor to TikTok Shop, is an online marketplace where people can buy and sell collectibles like trading cards and toys through live video auctions. Its new funding comes as a ban or forced divestment of ByteDance-owned TikTok looms in the U.S.
Andreessen Horowitz, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Y Combinator and other investors also participated in the Series E funding for Marina Del Rey, California-based Whatnot, which has now raised $749.7 million total, per Crunchbase.
The startup, founded in 2019, says more than $3 billion worth of items were sold on its platform last year. Its social selling platform allows sellers to host live video auctions in which they showcase items for sale in real time, interact directly with potential buyers via chat, and facilitate instant bidding within the app.
“The opportunity for what live and social commerce can do for sellers and sellers’ businesses is pretty tremendous,” Whatnot co-founder and CEO Grant LaFontaine told Bloomberg. “It’s going to be one of those things that changes every kind of category and part of retail.”
The company currently operates in the U.S., U.K. and Europe, and says it will use the new funds to develop new seller tools and expand into new markets and geographies. It plans to launch in Australia next month.
“Whatnot has tapped into a powerful shift in the way people shop — live, video, social, and mobile first. The company has built a multi-category platform that can address all of retail, approximately $7 trillion in the United States alone,” Marcie Vu, Whatnot board observer and a partner at Greycroft, said in a statement.
Illustration: Dom Guzman
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