- Whop raised $205 million at a $5.1 billion valuation in a round led by Sequoia.
- That is more than triple the $1.6 billion valuation it set in February.
- Whop says annualized revenue passed $400 million, up from $60 million at the start of 2025.
Sequoia Capital once passed on Whop. Now it is leading a $205 million Series D in the company at a $5.1 billion valuation that includes the new money, Bloomberg reported. The venture arm of Shopify is also investing.
Doug Leone, who ran Sequoia until 2022 and returned as chairman in March 2026, joins Whop’s board. Whop is his first deal since he went back to active investing, Bloomberg reported.
Sequoia had turned the company down before. Leone said the firm changed its mind after Whop showed that the businesses on its platform were growing and diversifying instead of churning.
From sneaker drops to a $5.1B valuation
Whop was founded in 2021 by Steven Schwartz, Cameron Zoub, and Jack Sharkey. The three met as teenagers while building software to track sneaker drops, according to Bloomberg. Sequoia says they were reselling sneakers online as teenagers in Chicago. Schwartz is CEO.
Whop lets people start, run, and scale online businesses from one place, instead of stitching together separate tools for payments, delivery, and marketing. Its merchants include an emergency tree removal service in Canada, a music playlist curator, and a private jet chartering app.
The company says about 25,000 operators generate $550 million a month through the platform, and that it provides income to more than 50,000 other people who help run those businesses. Sequoia says 10,000 new businesses start on Whop each day, including ones launched by students at Stanford, MIT, Harvard, Princeton, and Columbia, where Whop is part of the curriculum.
Whop earns most of its revenue by taking a cut of those transactions. Schwartz told Bloomberg the blended average fee is 6%, and that annualized revenue has passed $400 million. Sequoia’s announcement cites about half a billion dollars, so the figure differs by source. At $400 million, the valuation works out to about 13 times run-rate revenue. Whop’s numbers are company-reported and have not been independently verified.
“Whop’s metrics are nothing short of spectacular,” Leone wrote in Sequoia’s post on the deal, adding that the fastest-growing businesses on the platform have very low churn.
A threefold jump in under eight months
Whop’s previous valuation was $1.6 billion, set on February 25 when Tether made a $200 million strategic investment, as TFN reported. That deal brought Tether’s wallet toolkit into Whop for stablecoin payments, and the money was meant for expansion across Latin America, Europe, and Asia-Pacific.
This time, Whop says the capital will go toward global expansion and research and development. Other early backers include Peter Thiel, A-Star Capital, Insight Partners, and Bain Capital Ventures.
Part of that research effort is an AI-powered decision engine that uses Whop’s transaction data to help merchants raise their profits, according to Sequoia. Whop earns extra revenue when merchants use it.
A deal outside the AI race, with AI as the risk
Other platforms that help individuals earn from an audience or a skill have also raised money. Substack raised $100 million in July 2025 at a $1.1 billion valuation. ShopMy raised $70 million at $1.5 billion in October 2025. Berlin-based Passionfroot raised a $15 million Series A in July 2026, led by Insight Partners, which also backed Whop early. Each serves a different audience: newsletter writers, curated shopping, and B2B creator marketing.
Goldman Sachs Research estimated that the creator economy could grow from $250 billion in 2023 to $480 billion by 2027. Whop is aiming at more than content, with payments, distribution, and business tools in one place.
The risk is that AI makes Whop easier to replace. Sequoia’s post argues that AI is driving a wave of new entrepreneurs as the cost of starting a business falls. Cheaper ways to build websites, apps, and online services also give those entrepreneurs more places to go. Whether merchants keep paying a 6% cut once AI makes the rest of the work cheap is what the $5.1 billion valuation now rests on.
