Whatnot: What It Does, Who Runs It, Funding and News

Whatnot runs a marketplace where sellers go live on video and sell to the people watching, by auction or at a set price. It started in 2019 as a place to buy and sell authenticated Funko Pop figurines, moved into Pokémon cards and other collectibles, and built its livestream shopping app around them (TechCrunch, March 2021). Y Combinator's company page calls Whatnot "the largest livestream shopping platform in the U.S.", a description YC also used in a 2022 post.

This page covers Whatnot's key facts, what it sells and where, who leads it, every funding round it has announced and its news since late 2025.

Whatnot key facts

How Whatnot started

Grant LaFontaine and Logan Head launched the Whatnot app in December 2019, and applied to Y Combinator about three months later for its Winter 2020 batch, Fortune reported in August 2026. For their first livestream they sold their own Funko Pop collection, with LaFontaine hosting, and it sold out in about two and a half hours, according to the same account. Fortune also reports that the founders pitched hundreds of investors and stopped logging the rejections after 100.

Whatnot first launched with only a website, then added an app, a cross-listing tool that linked sellers' inventory to eBay and a live shopping feature, according to a Y Combinator post on its first five launches, published in September 2022. By March 2021, LaFontaine told TechCrunch that about 95% of the team's focus was on livestreaming (TechCrunch).

What Whatnot does

Whatnot is a two-sided marketplace: sellers host live video shows, and buyers watch and bid or buy as items come up. TechCrunch described formats such as "sudden death" auctions, where the last bidder wins, and time-limited flash sales in January 2025. Card breaks, where buyers pay for unopened boxes of trading cards and watch them opened live, were an early format (TechCrunch, July 2022).

• Categories: YC's page lists trading cards, comics, fashion and sneakers among them (YC). Whatnot said in June 2026 that it now spans hundreds of categories and that fashion is the largest by order volume (Whatnot blog).
• Countries: Whatnot's blog has editions for the US, Canada, the UK, France, Germany and Australia (Whatnot blog). In January 2025 TechCrunch listed it as live in the U.S., U.K., Canada, France, Germany, Austria, the Netherlands and Belgium, with Australia to follow (TechCrunch).
• Sales: Annual livestream gross merchandise value (GMV) passed $3 billion by January 2025 (TechCrunch), and more than $6 billion had been sold on Whatnot in 2025 by late October that year (Crunchbase News). Tubefilter reported $8 billion in live GMV for 2025 (Tubefilter, August 2026), and Whatnot said sellers had sold more by mid-2026 than in all of 2025 (Whatnot blog).
• How it earns: Whatnot charges sellers a commission on the item price, not on tax or shipping. Since September 2026 the rate starts at 8% and falls as low as 3% as a seller's sales over four weeks grow, with rates varying by category (Whatnot blog).

Who runs Whatnot

Grant LaFontaine is co-founder and CEO, as YC lists him and as Crunchbase News described him in October 2025 (Crunchbase News). Logan Head is the other co-founder (YC).

Whatnot's Trust and Safety team is its largest: roughly one in three employees works in it, the company said in August 2026 (Whatnot blog).

Whatnot funding history

Whatnot has announced a seed round and seven lettered rounds. Crunchbase News put the total raised through the Series F at about $968 million (Crunchbase News), a little less than the rounds below add up to, before the $545 million Series G in August 2026. The valuation rose from $1.5 billion in September 2021 to $20 billion in August 2026.

Two of the rounds came with tender offers for existing shares: up to $72 million with the Series E, Whatnot's first (TechCrunch), and up to $126 million with the Series F (Crunchbase News). TechCrunch's Series C report doesn't name a lead investor.

Whatnot recent news

• October 28, 2025: Whatnot closed its $225 million Series F at an $11.5 billion valuation (Crunchbase News).
• March 16, 2026: The Athletic reported that a St. Louis attorney, Paul Lesko, had filed 15 arbitration demands against Whatnot alleging that randomized card breaks and repack breaks on the platform are illegal lotteries under California law and violate the federal RICO Act. These are allegations, and the report did not include a response from Whatnot (CDC Gaming, citing The Athletic).
• June 18, 2026: Whatnot said sellers had passed one billion orders, with more than 20 items sold every second (Whatnot blog).
• July 15, 2026: Whatnot bought Shaped, a machine learning company that builds real-time ranking for recommendations and search. Founder Tullie Murrell and nearly a dozen engineers and researchers joined; terms weren't disclosed (Whatnot blog).
• August 7, 2026: Whatnot announced a $545 million Series G, which it called "the largest raise in live shopping", and said more than 650,000 people join each week (Whatnot blog). Fortune reported the valuation as $20 billion (Fortune).
• August 27, 2026: Whatnot opened a Trust Center at trust.whatnot.com on how it screens sellers and handles buyer protection (Whatnot blog).
• September 17, 2026: Whatnot cut its seller commissions to a tiered scale from 8% down to 3% (Whatnot blog).
• October 21, 2026: Whatnot launched "Take a Shopping Trip", its first national brand campaign, starring New York Giants running back Cam Skattebo with Whatnot sellers. The spot first aired during a Giants game on October 25 (Whatnot blog).