- Tilt raises $26M from Vinted Ventures and existing investors, taking total funding beyond $50M
- The live-commerce platform has grown 8x since its 2024 Series A and is now active across the UK, Italy, Spain, and Poland
- Vinted’s backing signals growing investor confidence that live shopping could become a major force in European recommerce
For two decades, e-commerce has optimised for convenience. Platforms became faster, search became smarter, and checkout friction all but disappeared. Yet the experience itself became increasingly transactional, creating an opening for a new generation of platforms that blend shopping, entertainment, and community.
London-based Tilt is betting that live commerce will become one of the defining shifts in online retail. The company has raised $26 million in fresh funding from Vinted Ventures alongside existing investors TQ Ventures, Balderton Capital, Earlybird, Seedcamp, and others.
The round takes total funding beyond $50 million. The investment comes as Western investors search for the equivalent of Asia’s $370 billion live-commerce market, where video-led shopping has evolved from a niche format into a mainstream retail channel.
Revolut colleagues building Europe’s live-commerce challenger
Founded in 2021 by former Revolut employees Abhi Thanendran and Neil Shah, Tilt was built around a simple observation that marketplaces had become highly efficient but increasingly impersonal. The founders believed live video could restore the trust and engagement lost in traditional e-commerce while creating entirely new opportunities for independent sellers.
As the pair previously told TFN, their experience at Revolut shaped their approach to company building, exposing them to the pace and ambition required to challenge entrenched industries. Rather than relying on static listings, Tilt enables sellers to host live auctions and interact directly with buyers in real time, creating a more engaging and social shopping experience.
Today, the platform is active across the UK, Italy, Spain, and Poland, and claims to be the only major live-commerce platform operating at scale in Europe.
Why investors are betting on live commerce
Unlike traditional marketplaces that depend heavily on listings and advertising, Tilt combines live video with an AI-powered infrastructure designed to make selling easier and product discovery more effective.
Its tools include Snap, which can convert a product shown during a livestream into a listing within seconds, a real-time AI copilot that helps sellers with pricing and customer interactions, natural-language search across live streams, and automated content clipping to extend the reach of livestreams beyond the platform.
Investors appear to be responding to more than the narrative. Since its Series A round in 2024, Tilt says it has grown eightfold. Buyers spend more than an hour a day on the platform, while 70% return every week. Repeat buyers now account for roughly 70% of monthly GMV.
Those engagement metrics are particularly notable because they suggest users are behaving less like occasional marketplace shoppers and more like members of a recurring community.
Tilt’s business model also differs from many e-commerce platforms. The company charges buyers rather than sellers, enabling entrepreneurs to start businesses without advertising budgets, websites, or significant upfront capital.
“The next generation won’t browse static listings the way their parents did—they’ll discover and buy through video, conversation, and live interaction, across every category,” says Abhi Thanendran.
The new funding will be used to accelerate the company’s AI roadmap, expand its seller base across additional markets, and continue growing its 60-person team.
“At Vinted, our mission is to make second-hand the first choice worldwide. Through Vinted Ventures, we back founders building the next generation of re-commerce. Tilt is creating a genuinely differentiated experience in live selling, a format we believe has strong potential in fashion and beyond, and we are excited to support them on that journey,” notes Martijn van Heeswijk, Corporate Development Principal at Vinted.
Competition in the live commerce space
Tilt is competing in a category that has attracted billions in venture capital globally.
US live-commerce giant Whatnot dominates the sector and has grown dramatically. In October 2025, the platform raised $225 million in a Series F round co-led by DST Global and CapitalG, more than doubling its valuation to $11.5 billion in just nine months. Whatnot has built dominance in collectibles and live auctions while expanding aggressively into fashion, beauty, electronics, and jewelry.
Another major competitor is Palmstreet, which raised $25 million in total funding in May 2025, led by Andreessen Horowitz, Craft Ventures, and Headline. Originally known for rare plants, Palmstreet has since pivoted into a full-scale lifestyle marketplace, expanding into fashion, beauty, athleisure, and collectibles, directly competing in the same categories Tilt targets.
What differentiates Tilt is its seller-first model, charging buyers rather than sellers, allowing entrepreneurs to launch businesses without advertising budgets or significant capital.
The broader outlook
The question facing the sector is whether Western consumers will embrace live commerce at anything close to the scale seen in Asia.
So far, many attempts have struggled to replicate the explosive growth witnessed in China and other Asian markets. Yet consumer behaviour is increasingly shifting towards video-first discovery, creator-led commerce, and community-driven purchasing decisions.
Tilt’s investors are clearly betting that trend will continue. With fresh capital, strategic support from Vinted, and a growing base of sellers generating six- and seven-figure revenues, the company is positioning itself as one of Europe’s strongest contenders in a live-commerce market that remains largely up for grabs.
