Whop, a Palo Alto startup that helps people start, run and scale their own businesses, has raised $205 million at a $5.1 billion valuation. Sequoia Capital is leading the round, with e-commerce giant Shopify Inc. named as the other investor, according to Whop. The company planned to announce the funding on Wednesday.
The valuation jump marks a striking leap for the marketplace platform, according to Bloomberg, which first reported the deal. Whop operates a marketplace and set of business tools that let sellers offer access to digital products and services, a niche that has grown alongside the broader creator economy. For Sequoia, the investment carries personal significance: longtime partner Doug Leone described it as his first deal at the firm since returning to an active investing role earlier in 2026, after Sequoia invited him to ramp back up following his time as chairman.
From a $17 Million Series A to a Multibillion-Dollar Marketplace
Whop's rise has been fast by any measure. Back in 2023, the company raised $17 million in a Series A round with backing from Insight Partners, The Chainsmokers, Peter Thiel and others, according to a report from TechCrunch. At that time, Whop was still a relatively modest operation: the TechCrunch report describes a marketplace of around a million customers and 3,000 sellers that had processed $100 million in transactions in total. The company was founded by Steven Schwartz, Cameron Zoub and Jack Sharkey.
Whop's pitch materials from that era leaned on broader consumer trends to make its case, citing research that 49% of consumers depend on influencer recommendations and 40% say they are likely to purchase something after seeing it on Twitter, YouTube or Instagram, per the TechCrunch report. A pitch deck Whop used around its Series A raise also showed gross merchandise volume on a steady upward trend, as detailed in a separate account from Business Insider.
GMV Run Rate Climbs Past $1.2 Billion
The scale of Whop's business has grown considerably since those early days. A profile from Sourcery reported that Whop reached a $1.2 billion gross merchandise volume run rate while enabling more than 28,000 monthly earners, and that the platform now processes more than $100 million per month for its creators. The same profile noted that Whop's engineering team remained famously lean, at just 15 to 20 developers, even as the company began investing heavily in a dedicated platform team starting in 2025.
There is a discrepancy worth noting in the public record on Whop's fundraising history: the Sourcery profile reported that Whop had raised approximately $80 million in total funding, most recently at an $800 million valuation, a figure that sits well below the $205 million and $5.1 billion valuation now reported by Bloomberg. The dossier does not clarify what accounts for the gap between those two sets of figures, and both are presented here as reported by their respective sources. Sourcery also reported that Whop's Series A was led by Insight Partners, while its Series B drew backing from a syndicate including Bain Capital Ventures and A*.
Leone's Return to the Deal Table
The new round also doubles as a marker of change inside Sequoia itself. The firm named Leone as chairman, according to Reuters, before later inviting him back into an active investing role. Sequoia told Reuters at the time that it had invited Leone to ramp back up as an investor at the firm, a shift that set the stage for his renewed dealmaking this year. The Whop investment stands as the first deal he has made at Sequoia since that return, a detail he described himself.
