- Investors are opening their wallets to social-shopping startups as TikTok’s US future sits in limbo.
- Companies like Whatnot and ShopMy have raised rounds in the tens of millions of dollars.
- Upstarts are also making acquisitions and launching creator funds to capitalize on the moment.
The moment is ripe for social-commerce startups in the US.
Investors are betting big on platforms like Whatnot and ShopMy. In January, Whatnot said it closed a $265 million fundraising round after crossing $3 billion in livestream sales in 2024. Shopify also said it closed a new round worth $77.5 million after reaching profitability.
“The timing of this raise aligns with a fundamental shift we’re seeing in the market — creator marketing is evolving from an experimental channel into a core performance driver for brands,” ShopMy’s CEO Harry Rein told Business Insider.
Part of the category’s momentum stems from TikTok. Over the past year, the company helped popularize livestream selling and connect thousands of merchants with influencers via its e-commerce tool, Shop.
But the app’s US future is uncertain. It’s disappeared from app stores and faces other fallout from a divest-or-ban law that requires its Chinese owner to separate from its US assets. Some e-commerce partners are testing alternative platforms to diversify where they sell.
Outside ShopMy and Whatnot, apps like Flip are gaining steam this month. Flip, a TikTok-like app focused on user-generated product reviews, recently landed in the top 10 in Apple’s app-store rankings. Flip could benefit from a TikTok ban if the company fails to find a path forward by an April deadline set by President Donald Trump.
“If the TikTok ban does move forward, these platforms have a huge opportunity,” said Ollie Forsyth, a former senior manager at investment firm Antler who now writes the newsletter New Economies. “Not only can they acquire huge volumes of creators, they can also acquire a huge number of new consumer users.”
How social-commerce startups are seizing the moment
On top of investors pouring cash into social-commerce startups, startups themselves are spending now to capitalize on a moment of flux in the US market.
Flip pledged to offer equity grants to creators, for example, to encourage them to engage more on the platform.
Attracting new users in large numbers will be key to filling the TikTok void if a ban were to go into effect, said Matt Nichols, a partner at Commerce Ventures.
TikTok Shop succeeded because it had a unique combination of a large user base and an algorithm that could match those users with products they were likely to buy, Nichols said.
“Twenty years ago, retailers dictated what consumers purchased, and there was a long sales cycle,” Nichols said. These days, there are “more quickly changing demand trends based on influencers, which has worked really well for TikTok Shop, but also hyper-fast retailers like Shein.”
As an investor, he sees the best opportunities in startups working to help retailers and influencers succeed on other platforms that already have similarly big user bases, like Instagram and YouTube.
Former TikTok e-commerce leader Sandie Hawkins said in a recent interview with BI that the shopping experience TikTok made popular is likely to be imitated elsewhere.
She said social shopping creates a “community environment” where friends tell you what they think you should buy. “You’re taking those recommendations right there, and you’re closing the loop instead of having to send them to go someplace else,” she said.
Here’s a breakdown of some of the big deals announced in January in the social-commerce category:
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Livestream shopping app Whatnot closed a $265 million Series E round at a roughly $5 billion valuation. DST Global, Avra Capital, and Greycroft led the round, with participation from Andreessen Horowitz, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and Durable Capital Partners, among others.
Whatnot’s CEO Grant LaFontaine told BI the company planned to use its new funding to scale marketing, product, and engineering and expand into new markets like Australia.
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Gloss Ventures, an investment company focused on launching creator brands through social commerce and other channels, raised $15 million from private-equity firm Peterson Partners.
Gloss Ventures’ cofounder Quinn Roukema told BI the new funds would support its marketing efforts and plans to expand retail sales globally.
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Creator-affiliate platform ShopMy raised a $77.5 million Series B round led by Bessemer Venture Partners and Bain Capital Ventures. Menlo Ventures participated, as did previous investors Inspired Capital and AlleyCorp.
Rein, ShopMy’s CEO, told BI the company planned to use its funds to expand into new categories like hospitality and health and wellness, as well as to scale its performance marketing tech with new data analytics and measurement features.
- Influencer-marketing firm Later announced a $250 million acquisition of affiliate company Mavely. The deal was funded with a strategic investment from growth equity investor Summit Partners. CEO Scott Sutton told BI the purchase aimed to help Later offer clients a fuller picture of their marketing spend.
He said Mavely has 120,000 creators driving sales of over $1 billion in merchandise value.
“All of that data and all of that ability to track what’s happening in the creator economy helps us to make money for creators, helps consumers discover the right types of products, and helps us deploy ad dollars for marketers in a really seamless way,” Sutton said.
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