The news: Live shopping platform Whatnot raised $225 million in its most recent funding round, valuing the company at $11.5 billion, double its worth at the beginning of 2025.

The funds will go toward developing new features, international expansion, and new hires in the engineering, marketing, and sales departments.

Why investors are interested: While livestream commerce is still its infancy, Whatnot is shaping up to be one of its biggest players.

• Sales are heating up. The company has generated $6 billion in gross merchandise value (GMV) this year, more than twice last year’s amount.
• Customers are loyal and engaged. Customer retention MoM stands at 80%, up 18% from last year. On average, viewers spend 80 minutes a day watching content on Whatnot’s app—dwarfing the average time spent on YouTube and TikTok, per our forecast.

However, the company is not yet profitable as it focuses on growth, co-founder and CEO Grant LaFontaine told The New York Times.

Our take: Platforms like Whatnot are introducing live shopping to a new generation of consumers who are more dialed into social video than linear TV channels like HSN and QVC.

However, for all its growth, livestream commerce remains a tiny drop in the vast ocean of ecommerce, making it more useful as an opportunity to boost engagement and build community than as a sales driver.

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