Whop raises $200m at $5.1bn valuation eight months after Tether deal. Whop logo displayed on a smartphone or laptop, with digital payments and business analytics visible in the background. Reading Time: Published October 30, 2026 9:27 AM PDT Whop has closed a $200 million Series D at a $5.1 billion valuation, with Sequoia Capital and Shopify Ventures leading the round. The company, which is headquartered in Palo Alto, California, announced the raise on 21 October. The valuation compares with $1.6 billion in February, when Tether, the stablecoin issuer, put $200 million into the company as a strategic investment. Whop has therefore raised $400 million this year across two rounds of identical size, and the new valuation is more than three times the earlier one. Whop said the proceeds will go towards international expansion and research and development aimed at making payment and advertising markets more efficient. Bloomberg, which first reported the round, put the company's headcount at 110 and said annualised run-rate revenue recently passed $400 million, from $60 million at the beginning of 2025. Most of that revenue is a percentage of each transaction processed on the platform, with chief executive Steven Schwartz telling Bloomberg the blended average fee is about 6%. Among Whop's latest products is Economic Intelligence, a decision engine trained on millions of transactions that recommends the highest-ROI next move for each business. Access is charged as an additional percentage of the revenue earned from using the system, so Whop's income from the product scales with the revenue the business earns through it. Whop gives business operators a gamified interface and an API that covers distribution, business creation and money. The company reports roughly 25,000 operators generating $550 million a month, more than 50,000 other people earning a monthly income from services supplied to those businesses, and more than $7 billion in on-platform transactions reaching 185 countries. Customers span the range from product heads at high-growth startups to 16-year-olds running a first business, according to the announcement. Doug Leone, partner at Sequoia Capital, is taking a board seat as part of the deal, according to Bloomberg. "They're doing about a half billion revenue, business is doing great, and we're helping humanity create businesses for people who can't find a job," Leone said in the announcement. Businesses operating on Whop tend to serve tightly defined customer needs, the company said. Examples it gave include invoicing software for haulage firms, private jet booking platforms, data suppliers for humanoid robotics companies, emergency tree removal services and neobanks for dropshippers. Two other products have shipped in the past three months. Business Blueprints lets a new operator put a sellable business live in a few clicks and has produced more than 21,000 businesses in six weeks. The Whop CLI, released in July, allows any AI agent to work with the company's API so that operators can run their businesses through prompts; the CLI and Whop's MCP connectors receive more than 350,000 calls a day from more than 14,700 monthly active users. "We take inspiration from the traditional economy in designing Whop, and because businesses are the primary conduit by which people earn money and create value, we focus on them as our primary customer," Schwartz said. Insight Partners, Bain Capital Ventures, A* and Peter Thiel are among the company's earlier investors, Bloomberg reported. Founded in 2021, Whop has an office in New York and plans further offices in Colombia and in Europe, per Bloomberg. It has vacancies in engineering, product, sales and operations. Follow Finance Monthly Just for you Mark Palmer

Whop raises $200M at $5.1B valuation after shipping three products in three months. October 27, 2026 - 5:29 pm Palo Alto-based Whop has closed a $200 million Series D led by Sequoia Capital and Shopify Ventures at a $5.1 billion valuation, and plans to open offices in Europe and Colombia, Bloomberg reported. 2The company said the capital will fund its expansion abroad and research into payments and advertising. Tether invested $200 million in Whop in February at a $1.6 billion valuation, which means the company's valuation has more than tripled in eight months. Whop describes its customers as business operators, from product chiefs at high-growth startups to 16-year-olds running their first business. It gives them a gamified interface and an extensive API for distribution, business creation and money. The company says roughly 25,000 operators generate $550 million a month on the platform, with more than 50,000 other people earning monthly from services to those businesses. Cumulative on-platform transactions have passed $7 billion across 185 countries. That API can be driven by AI agents through the Whop CLI, released in July, which lets operators run their businesses via prompts. The CLI and the company's MCP connectors handle 350,000-plus calls per day, and monthly active users top 14,700, according to the announcement. Whop has also launched Business Blueprints, which deploys a ready-to-sell business in a few clicks and has produced more than 21,000 businesses in six weeks, and Economic Intelligence, which recommends the highest-ROI next move for a business based on millions of past transactions. Economic Intelligence is paid for with an extra percentage of the revenue a business earns from using it. In its announcement, Whop pointed to a Forbes report that entry-level job opportunities are at an all-time low and said AI is calling traditional career paths into question. The company pitches itself as a way for people to earn on their own terms, and says most businesses on it serve hyper-specific customer needs, citing neobanks for dropshippers, private jet booking platforms, invoicing software for trucking companies, data suppliers for humanoid robotics companies and emergency tree removal services. "We take inspiration from the traditional economy in designing Whop, and because businesses are the primary conduit by which people earn money and create value, we focus on them as our primary customer," said Steven Schwartz, co-founder and CEO. Sequoia partner Doug Leone joins the board as part of the deal, per Bloomberg. "They're doing about a half billion revenue, business is doing great, and we're helping humanity create businesses for people who can't find a job," he said in the announcement. Whop's annualized run-rate revenue recently went past $400 million, from $60 million at the beginning of 2025, Bloomberg reported. Schwartz told the outlet that most revenue is a percentage of each transaction processed on the platform, with a blended average fee of about 6%. Its three founders, who met as teenagers over software that tracked sneaker releases, started the company in 2021; it employs around 110 people and has an office in New York. Earlier investors include A*, Peter Thiel, Insight Partners and Bain Capital Ventures, per Bloomberg. Whop is hiring for engineering, product, sales and operations roles. Get the most important tech news in your inbox each week. Contributed article. Not produced by the TNW newsroom and does not reflect the editorial stance of TNW.

Whop partners with Lightspark to get sellers paid faster. Lightspark Oct 26, 2026 Every day, somewhere between 10 and 15 people make their first $20,000 on Whop. Some offer services. Some run fitness programs, marketing agencies, or sell health & beauty brands. Most of them started with a laptop and something they knew how to do. Ask any of them about the best moment in their week and you hear the same answer: the money landing in their account. That moment is what its partnership with Whop is about. Whop. Whop is an end-to-end platform for distribution, business creation, and money. Around 22 million people use it, sellers reach buyers in 185 countries, and the platform does more than $7 billion in annual network volume. Whop also made an early call that sellers should be able to hold what they earn in stablecoins. That call has aged well. Stablecoins are now written into law in the US and Europe, and dollars that move at internet speed are useful to anyone selling across borders. The hard part is the last step: getting those dollars into the bank account your rent comes out of, quickly, cheaply, and on a Sunday if that is when you need them. Whop allows for instant, global money movement. Paying sellers at Whop's scale. Paying 60,000 sellers is a different job than paying 600. Every payout touches a bank, a compliance check, a pool of liquidity, and a person refreshing their banking app. At Whop's volume, all of it has to work every day of the week, including the days banks are closed. Here is how a payout works on Lightspark. The platform requests a quote, and the exchange rate locks with every fee itemized before any money moves. It can lock the amount it sends or the exact amount the seller receives. Funding comes from a balance held with Lightspark, in dollars or stablecoins, or arrives just in time, and the payout executes the moment it lands. From there, the API picks the rail by speed, cost, and availability across 65+ countries: ACH and FedNow in the US, SEPA Instant in Europe, PIX in Brazil, UPI in India, SPEI in Mexico. Every status change comes back as a signed webhook, so the platform's books match what actually settled. The platform designs what its users see, and the rest is one integration. Why this matters beyond Whop. Commerce on the internet is global from the first sale. A coach in Ohio has clients in Manila and Lagos before she has hired anyone. The money behind platforms like Whop has to work the same way: dollars and stablecoins, in and out, any day of the week, without the seller ever thinking about how it moved. Soon a growing share of that buying will be done by AI agents acting for people and companies, and agents don't wait for banking hours either. The platforms that get money movement right are the ones people will build their livelihoods on. Whop is one of them, and Lightspark Group is proud to work with them.