Whatnot Live Shopping Hits $20B Valuation as US Sales Surge

A Culver City app turns shopping into a show

A livestream can sell more than 200 vintage watches in about 90 minutes, one seven-second auction after another. That is how Whatnot, a startup based in Los Angeles, has pushed live shopping into the American mainstream. A Los Angeles Times profile published Oct. 9 describes this scene: former reality-TV producer Stef Garcia counts down bids on Y2K watches, and some of them sell for $13. She says she has made more than half a million dollars on the app over four years21. The paper calls the format "QVC on steroids," with thousands of hosts selling everything from soap to baseball cards21.

The numbers behind the story have grown fast. Whatnot says it passed $8 billion in live sales in 2025 and is on pace to more than double that this year. It added more than 16 million new accounts in 2026 but would not say how many users it has in total21. In August it raised a $545 million Series G at a $20 billion valuation. The round was led by ICONIQ, Lightspeed and avra, and it nearly doubled the $11.5 billion valuation from October 20257. The company also said sellers sold more in the first half of 2026 than in all of 2025, and that it passed one billion cumulative orders by June9.

How Whatnot works, and why it took off

Whatnot was founded in 2019 by Grant LaFontaine and Logan Head. It began as a marketplace for authenticated Funko Pop figurines and added livestreaming later21. LaFontaine sold Pokémon cards as a kid and later worked at Facebook and YouTube. Head was a senior product manager at the sneaker marketplace GOAT21. According to one company history, Head coded the livestream feature in about six weeks in summer 2020, after the startup went through Y Combinator, and the first stream sold $5,000 worth of Funko Pops29.

The business model is simple. Whatnot takes an average fee of about 8% on each sale, according to chief revenue officer Armand Wilson21. Sacra, a research firm, adds payment processing fees and advertising products such as boosted livestreams. It says that brings the effective take rate to about 12.5%, and it estimates 2025 revenue at around $1 billion, up from $359 million in 20243. The company was still unprofitable as of mid-20253.

The app keeps people watching for a long time. Whatnot's own seller report puts average use at 95 minutes a day, up 19% from a year earlier, with monthly customer retention above 80%6. Earlier figures said 80 minutes28, so engagement seems to be rising as the platform grows. eMarketer notes that this beats average time spent on YouTube and TikTok2.

The product range has also widened well beyond trading cards. Beauty sales rose 791% in 2025, electronics 444%, jewelry 259% and women's fashion 223%6. The platform now covers more than 250 categories7, including live seafood sales; one Costa Mesa fish seller streamed from a boat for 48 hours21.

The TikTok Shop comparison

Whatnot's rise makes the most sense next to TikTok Shop, the biggest force in American social commerce. eMarketer analyst Sky Canaves told the Times that Whatnot is "really the first" company besides TikTok to gain real traction in US live shopping22. Canaves also expects TikTok Shop's US sales to reach about $23 billion in 2026, which she says would be more than Target's online sales20.

The more useful comparison is between the two platforms' live businesses, and there the gap closes. Data firm Charm estimates TikTok Shop's global livestream sales at $17.1 billion in 2025, with only about $2.8 billion in the US22. Another estimate, cited by Modern Retail, puts TikTok LIVE above $3 billion in US sales over 12 months17. Either way, Whatnot's $8 billion in 2025 live sales is larger than TikTok's US livestream business. Some of Whatnot's total comes from outside the US, but it says live commerce makes up 74% of sales for its US sellers6. Whatnot is said to hold roughly 60% of the live shopping market across North America and Europe7.

The two platforms are built differently. TikTok's strength is recommendations: its algorithm can put a livestream in front of people who don't follow the seller17. Most TikTok Shop sales still come from shoppable short videos. Momentum Works estimated that in 2025 about half of US TikTok Shop sales came from video, 36% from the Shop tab and only 14% from live commerce13. Even the size of that live share is disputed. One analysis says it is growing, while eMarketer reported it falling from 26% to 18% between mid-2024 and mid-2025 as pre-recorded video grew faster18.

The best reading is that TikTok is mainly a shoppable-video platform with live selling added on, and Whatnot is a live auction house with a social layer. Whatnot is also building into TikTok's territory with "Video Listings," which attach shoppable clips to standard listings3. TikTok, in turn, has copied Whatnot's main mechanic. In May it expanded "Countdown Bidding," a live auction tool with timers, for eligible sellers17. Each platform is borrowing the other's strongest feature.

Where Instagram and the rest fit

Instagram plays a smaller role in this story. The Wild Ginger Vintage seller profiled by Inc. had built a private client list and an Instagram storefront before Whatnot recruited her. She now sells $5,000 to $35,000 in luxury handbags on a typical evening stream24. That suggests sellers see Instagram as a place to get discovered and Whatnot as a place to close sales. Marketing firms report that TikTok Shop converts shoppers at roughly twice Instagram Shopping's rate15. Those are industry estimates, not audited figures, but they match the larger pattern: Meta has not yet built a live-selling hit in the US.

Older players are reacting. eBay and Amazon have started their own live shopping efforts22. QVC's parent company, which also owns HSN, has said it will go all-in on live social shopping as it works through bankruptcy20. That move suggests the old home-shopping channels see their future in this format.

The money is concentrated in one company. Inc. reports that $490 million of the $580 million in venture funding for live and social commerce in 2025 went to Whatnot. One investor said there was little traction "beyond Whatnot"24.

Still a small slice of US e-commerce

Live shopping in the US is still small next to China. Livestream sales there are projected to reach $1.1 trillion in 2026, about 31% of e-commerce. In the US, live shopping is roughly 1% of online sales22. eMarketer forecasts US livestream e-commerce growing from $19.76 billion in 2026 to $31.24 billion in 202921.

Estimates of the market's size vary widely. Statista has projected a $68 billion US livestream market for 202614, more than three times eMarketer's figure. Another tally puts 2025 at $14.64 billion7. Whatnot's own numbers have shifted as well. In October 2025, eMarketer cited $6 billion in GMV for the year2, and Whatnot later reported a total above $8 billion6. Sources even disagree on where the company is based: most coverage says Culver City, while Wikipedia lists Marina del Rey8.

Broader social commerce, the category that includes TikTok Shop and Instagram checkout, is bigger. eMarketer puts US social commerce above $100 billion in 2026, or about 7% of retail e-commerce13. Even by conservative estimates, live selling is the fastest-growing part of that category, and Whatnot accounts for a large share of it.

Overspending and addiction concerns

The features that drive Whatnot's growth are also the source of the biggest criticism. One shopper told the Times she deleted the app to stop herself from chasing deals, and the paper reported that one user spent more than $1 million on the platform21. A Bloomberg Businessweek source described a "dopamine hit" from fast auctions and said she once paid $800 for perfume by accident because bidding moved so quickly24. A legal complaint reported by The Athletic accuses Whatnot of operating like "an unregulated online casino"24. Consumer-advocacy coverage says some users are tens of thousands of dollars in debt from repeated bidding26.

Whatnot points to tools that let users set spending and watch-time limits22. It says more than 30% of its staff work on trust and safety, and it uses identity checks and automated detection to stop fraud21. LaFontaine gave Inc. a higher figure of 35% to 40% of employees in customer support, and called that work the hardest thing to get right24. The company has also faced theft problems; one prominent Los Angeles sneaker seller who used the platform was accused of selling stolen goods21.

Sellers have their own pressures. Daily streamers in the US average about $69,000 in monthly sales, and frequent streamers earn 100 to 250 times more than occasional ones6. That means the most successful sellers are the ones who stream constantly. Some sellers also say fees, promotion costs and shipping are cutting into their margins6.

What it means

In practice, the debate over whether live shopping could work in the US is settled. Whatnot has a $20 billion valuation, an estimated $8 billion-plus in 2025 sales, and engagement levels that TikTok and YouTube have not matched. The open questions are whether it can keep its lead in auction-style live selling now that TikTok has added auctions and Amazon and eBay are spending heavily, and whether regulators will start treating countdown bidding more like gambling. Whatnot's fast growth comes from the same design features that draw the most criticism, so how it handles spending limits and safeguards could matter as much as its next funding round.