What’s funding like in the social commerce market right now?

All funding deals in the social commerce market over the last 24 months

Below is the table listing all the deals. You can find our methodology at the end of this page.

If you want a deeper understanding of the market and its current dynamics, get our report covering the Social Commerce Market.

Is social commerce funding actually healthier right now?

Social commerce funding looks healthier in a few important ways right now, but the market has also become much more concentrated.

The headline is spectacular: disclosed funding rose from $488.6M to $979.2M, a 100% increase. The rest of the picture is much less spectacular. Deal count moved from 18 to 19, the number of funded companies stayed at 18, and capital excluding rounds above $50M fell 4.7%.

There is real improvement underneath the giant rounds, though. The median financing jumped from $6.9M to $11.15M, first financings increased from five to seven, and early-stage companies represented a larger share of deals.

Monthly activity also tells a mixed story. The median month improved from one to 1.5 deals and from $9.88M to $17.6M of capital, yet the current period had three months with no deals versus two previously. Funding is stronger when transactions happen, but activity is still patchy.

The clearest description today is a more polarized market. Early-stage formation has improved, successful companies can raise much larger rounds, and the space between those two ends has become thinner.

Metric	Current L12M	Previous 12M	Change
Deals	19	18	+5.6%
Unique companies	18	18	0%
Disclosed capital	$979.24M	$488.56M	+100.4%
Capital excluding >$50M rounds	$139.24M	$146.06M	-4.7%
Capital excluding >$100M rounds	$209.24M	$223.56M	-6.4%
Median round	$11.15M	$6.90M	+61.6%
First-financing share	36.8%	27.8%	+9.1 pp
Early-stage deal share	68.4%	61.1%	+7.3 pp

Did social commerce funding really double, or is Whatnot carrying the boom?

Social commerce funding did double on paper, yet Whatnot explains most of that jump.

Whatnot raised $225M and then another $545M during the current period. Those are two separate financings, and together they represent $770M, or 78.6% of all current funding. Add ShopMy's $70M round and the three largest transactions account for 85.8% of the period's capital.

Simply removing the largest deal is not enough, because Whatnot still has another $225M financing in the dataset. The cleaner comparison is to apply the same size threshold to both periods.

Once every round above $50M is stripped out, current funding comes to $139.2M versus $146.1M previously. With a $100M cutoff, the result is $209.2M versus $223.6M.

So the boom is concentrated at the top. The average social commerce company did not suddenly get access to twice as much venture capital. A tiny group of proven businesses became capable of absorbing checks that are much larger than what we saw a year earlier.

The latest Whatnot numbers make that concentration easier to understand. In its most recent Series G announcement, the company said sellers had already sold more halfway through 2026 than during all of 2025, while more than 650,000 people were joining Whatnot each week. A $545M round makes much more sense in that context than as evidence that social commerce startups generally have twice as much money available.

Are more social commerce companies getting funded now?

Social commerce is funding roughly the same number of companies as a year ago.

We counted 19 current deals across 18 companies, compared with 18 deals across 18 companies in the previous period. The extra transaction comes from Whatnot raising twice, rather than from a broader expansion in the number of funded businesses.

That flat headline hides some turnover underneath. Seven current financings are first rounds for the company in our social-commerce dataset, compared with five previously. New entrants such as District, Paage, Pinpoint, Rwaj, Unbox and Wassist are appearing while other names from the previous period disappear.

The market is therefore refreshing itself more than the company count suggests. We have more newly funded startups, but not a larger funded ecosystem overall.

Are investors backing new social commerce startups, or mostly doubling down on winners?

New social commerce startups are getting funded more often, while established companies still take almost all the big checks.

First financings rose from five to seven, a 40% increase, and their median size moved from $1.46M to $2M. That is a useful improvement at the entry point: more companies are getting onto the venture funding ladder, and the typical initial check is a little larger.

The money splits very differently. Those seven first financings account for only $25.1M, or 2.6% of current capital. Follow-on rounds absorbed $954.1M.

The gap is visible company by company. District entered with $14.7M, while Paage, Pinpoint, Rwaj and Wassist raised much smaller first rounds. On the other side, Whatnot, ShopMy, Tilt, Levanta and Wishlink were already funded companies coming back for more capital.

The follow-on median also increased from $10.4M to $16.75M. Investors are still creating new funded startups, but the serious money currently goes to businesses that have already survived at least one financing cycle.

Metric	Current L12M	Previous 12M
First financings	7	5
First-financing share	36.8%	27.8%
Capital in first financings	$25.11M	$16.73M
Median first financing	$2.00M	$1.46M
Follow-ons	12	13
Follow-on share	63.2%	72.2%
Capital in follow-ons	$954.13M	$471.83M
Median follow-on	$16.75M	$10.40M

Is social commerce funding getting stuck at the extremes?

Social commerce funding has become noticeably more barbell-shaped, with more tiny rounds and more giant rounds while the $20M-$50M middle has thinned out.

Rounds below $5M increased from seven to nine and now represent nearly half of all current transactions. At the opposite end, the number of $100M+ rounds rose from one to two.

The weakest band is $20M-$50M. It went from three deals to two, while its share of capital dropped from 18.2% to 4.9%. The $50M-$100M range produced only one financing in each period.

The company examples make the shape easy to see. Rwaj raised $1.2M, Wassist $1.1M, Paage $2M and Pinpoint $2.5M. Then the scale jumps dramatically: Whatnot raised $225M and $545M. Tilt at $26M and Levanta at $22M are among the relatively few current deals sitting in the middle.

This split also explains one of the apparent contradictions in the numbers. The median round can rise sharply while capital outside the largest rounds declines, because funding has become more unevenly distributed across company maturity levels.

Which social commerce category is getting the most investor attention right now?

Live social commerce is where investor attention has shifted most clearly.

The category went from one deal in the previous period to five currently. Creator-led commerce slipped from six deals to five, DM commerce tools stayed at five, and social-commerce platforms remained at four. Click-through social commerce went from two deals to zero.

The live-commerce capital number is heavily inflated by Whatnot, so deal count tells us more about the category's breadth. Tilt raised $26M, Siin raised $3M and Rwaj raised $1.2M alongside Whatnot's two rounds. That gives us several independent companies across the US, UK and Middle East rather than a single isolated transaction.

Creator commerce looks different. Funding remains substantial, but the category increasingly revolves around companies that can connect creator activity to measurable sales. ShopMy, Wishlink and Levanta all fit that pattern.

DM commerce is still active but currently smaller in check size. Five deals happened in each period, yet the median fell from $3.5M to $2.5M. Vambe's $14M Series A stands out against smaller rounds for Pinpoint, nFuse, Wassist and TextYess.

Is live social commerce really taking off now?

Live social commerce now has enough activity beyond Whatnot to call the category expansion real, although Whatnot still dominates the dollars.

Whatnot accounts for 96.2% of current live-commerce capital, so nobody should use the category's total funding as a measure of broad startup health. The more convincing evidence comes from what is happening around it.

Tilt raised $26M with Vinted Ventures joining the round. The company says it has grown eightfold since its 2024 Series A, now operates in the UK, Italy, Spain and Poland, and gets 70% of monthly GMV from repeat buyers. Siin and Rwaj are much smaller, but both add new live-shopping activity in the Gulf.

The platform data outside our funding dataset has also strengthened lately. TikTok reported that US TikTok Shop sales grew 120% year over year during the first part of 2025 and that brands and creators hosted more than eight million hours of US LIVE shopping during 2024. During the following Black Friday and Cyber Monday period, TikTok Shop recorded more than $500M of US sales in four days, while sellers hosting livestreams saw 84% year-over-year sales growth.

Whatnot's latest operating figures go further. The company reported $8B in live sales during 2025, more than twice the prior year, and a 600% increase in its European seller base. Its newest funding announcement then said 2026 sales had already passed the full-year 2025 level halfway through the year.

Company-reported numbers deserve the usual caution, but the direction is consistent across several platforms and companies. Live commerce currently has more users, more sellers, more geographic reach and more venture-backed companies than the funding table alone would show.

Is creator commerce still attracting serious funding?

Creator commerce is still attracting serious capital, but it looks more mature than explosive.

Deal count slipped from six to five and aggregate capital was broadly flat at $127.5M versus $131.4M. The median round, however, increased from $13.45M to $17.5M.

ShopMy is the clearest example of where the category is heading. The company raised $70M at a $1.5B valuation after an earlier $77.5M Series B. Its own product positioning has increasingly focused on measurable creator-driven sales rather than simple influencer exposure.

Wishlink gives us another good example. Its $17.5M Series B was 2.5 times its earlier $7M round. Vertex Ventures says the platform now works with more than 40,000 monthly active creators producing over 300,000 pieces of content each month, generating more than six million orders and over ₹350 crore in monthly sales for partner brands and marketplaces.

Levanta raised $22M after a $20M Series A and is using the new money to expand its technology, go-to-market team and marketplace coverage.

These companies are selling infrastructure around attribution, creator networks, commerce media and measurable transactions. Investors still care about creators, but the pitch has moved closer to performance marketing and retail infrastructure than to the broader creator-economy hype of a few years ago.

Why is Europe suddenly showing up in so many social commerce deals?

Europe is suddenly showing up because a cluster of smaller UK and continental startups got funded, not because Europe produced a new megadeal.

European deal share jumped from 5.6% to 42.1%, the biggest geographic change in our comparison. Eight current deals are European, and five of those companies are based in the UK.

Tilt is the largest visible European round at $26M. The rest includes companies such as Duel, Paage, nFuse, TextYess, Unbox and Wassist, mostly at much smaller ticket sizes. The European median financing is only about $2.4M.

That explains why Europe's deal boom barely changes the capital map. Its eight financings account for 6.4% of current dollars, while seven North American deals account for 90%.

Asia-Pacific went the other way, falling from five transactions to one. The remaining current deal is Wishlink's $17.5M Series B in India.

There is also some commercial evidence behind Europe's rise. Tilt is already operating across four European countries. TikTok Shop has expanded across European markets, and its UK operation reported that Black Friday/Cyber Monday sales rose 50% year over year in 2025, with LIVE shopping sales up 68%.

Europe currently looks like a formation market for social-commerce startups. North America remains the place where the largest funding pools are being deployed.

Region	Current deals	Previous deals	Current capital share	Current median
Europe	8	1	6.4%	$2.42M
North America	7	8	90.0%	$22.0M
Middle East	2	1	0.4%	$2.1M
Asia-Pacific	1	5	1.8%	$17.5M
Latin America	1	3	1.4%	$14.0M

Are social commerce investors moving earlier or later?

By deal count, social commerce moved earlier; by dollars, it moved later.

Seed deals increased from eight to ten and now represent 52.6% of all transactions. When Series A is included, early-stage financings account for 68.4% of the current market.

Those companies received only 7.5% of the capital, down from 17.2% previously. Later-stage companies captured 82.7% of current dollars while representing just 21.1% of deals.

Series B is where the contrast becomes especially visible. Its share of capital dropped from 25.1% to 4.0%, while Series D+ increased from 54.2% to 78.6%.

So funding is moving in both directions at once: plenty of seed formation underneath very large checks for mature winners.

Stage	Current deal share	Previous deal share	Current capital share	Previous capital share
Seed	52.6%	44.4%	3.3%	9.2%
Series A	15.8%	16.7%	4.2%	8.0%
Series B	10.5%	16.7%	4.0%	25.1%
Series D+	10.5%	5.6%	78.6%	54.2%
Unknown stage	10.5%	16.7%	9.8%	3.5%
Early stage	68.4%	61.1%	7.5%	17.2%
Later stage	21.1%	22.2%	82.7%	79.3%

Are strategic investors becoming more important in social commerce?

Strategic investors are showing up more often in social commerce, particularly around companies with clearer links to retail, marketplaces and live shopping.

We identified four current strategic-backed deals versus two previously. Their share of all financings rose from 11.1% to 21.1%, although better disclosure in the current period explains part of that increase.

The names are more interesting than the percentage. Bright Pixel Capital, the technology investment arm of retail group Sonae, joined Duel's $16M Series A. Shift Group backed Siin. Vinted Ventures participated in Tilt's $26M round. CapitalG joined Whatnot's $225M Series F.

Tilt is probably the cleanest example. Vinted already operates one of Europe's biggest second-hand marketplaces, so its investment brings operating relevance beyond the capital itself. Vinted Ventures explicitly focuses on companies building the next generation of recommerce.

The median strategic-backed round rose to $21M from roughly $6.1M previously. Still, that's only four current observations, so there is not enough here for a sweeping market-wide claim.

The broader investor pool remains healthy as well. We counted 23 unique disclosed lead investors currently versus 21 previously, and no lead investor appeared more than once inside either period. Capital is highly concentrated by company, while lead-investor participation remains fairly broad. Because our records capture leads rather than complete syndicates, we stop the conclusion there.

Are social commerce companies raising again faster now?

Some of the strongest social commerce companies are raising again quickly, but the market-wide comparison is too incomplete to say that everyone is fundraising faster.

We could reconstruct a previous financing for six of the 12 current follow-ons. Their median gap between known rounds is 15.4 months, and half returned to market within a year.

Whatnot is the extreme case, raising $545M roughly nine months after its $225M round. Wishlink moved from $7M to $17.5M, a 2.5x increase. Levanta returned with $22M after raising $20M in its Series A.

Across those six usable current comparisons, the median round step-up is 1.27x. Two of the six more than doubled the size of their previous financing.

The previous period gives us only one comparable follow-on with a reliable prior-round date and size. That is nowhere near enough for a valid year-over-year speed comparison.

For now, the defensible conclusion is narrower: the companies showing strong traction can come back quickly and raise materially larger rounds. We cannot claim the average social commerce startup is doing the same.

Do social commerce startups need more proof to raise a big round now?

Big social commerce rounds now seem to require visible commercial proof, while small seed checks are still available for much earlier bets.

The strongest current financings are attached to companies that can show more than a product story. Whatnot has billions of dollars of seller activity. Tilt says it has grown eightfold since its previous Series A, operates across four countries and gets most of its monthly GMV from repeat buyers. Wishlink reports millions of orders each month. ShopMy has raised at a $1.5B valuation after building infrastructure around attributable creator sales.

Vambe provides a useful example outside live and creator commerce. When it raised its $14M Series A, the company said more than 1,700 businesses were already using the platform and that its team had grown beyond 80 people across Chile and Mexico. Its new capital is going into product, customer experience and expansion into Brazil.

At the same time, investors are still funding much earlier companies. Wassist raised $1.1M for a no-code WhatsApp commerce-agent product. District announced $14.7M in seed funding while opening its commerce infrastructure more broadly after three years of development. Unbox raised its first institutional financing around a platform built by former TikTok Shop executives.

We cannot cleanly compare company age because the founding-year field contains a systematic 2009 value that conflicts with known company histories across many rows. Rather than manufacture an age trend from bad inputs, we excluded those records from age analysis.

The funding pattern itself is clearer. Investors are still willing to finance experiments, but getting into the $20M, $50M or $500M range these days tends to come with actual transaction volume, repeat customers, geographic expansion or proven merchant adoption.

What are social commerce companies actually raising money to do now?

Large social commerce rounds are increasingly funding scale: more sellers, more buyers, more markets and better commerce infrastructure.

Whatnot is the clearest case. Its $225M round was tied to seller growth, product tools, marketing, trust and international expansion. The subsequent $545M Series G again centered on helping sellers grow, bringing more buyers onto the platform, expanding categories and markets, and building new tools.

Tilt's $26M round has a similar flavor. The company plans to expand its seller base, enter more markets, develop its AI roadmap and grow the team. Tilt had already moved from the UK into Italy, Spain and Poland before raising the money.

Wishlink plans to expand its brand and creator network while building more technology across the shopping journey. Levanta is investing in creator-commerce technology, go-to-market capacity and integrations with more retail marketplaces. Duel is using its Series A for US expansion and further product development.

There is still an experimentation layer underneath. Wassist is funding product development and growth. District is investing in AI tools and operational infrastructure. Unbox is building the tooling brands need to manage social-commerce content, compliance and performance at scale.

We do not have a structured use-of-funds field for every deal, so we cannot turn those examples into a precise percentage split. Still, the larger rounds tell a fairly consistent story: social commerce's best-funded companies are spending less time proving the basic format and more time trying to industrialize it.

Is social commerce funding becoming more consistent month to month?

Social commerce funding is still lumpy month to month, even though the typical active month has improved.

Average deal activity barely changed, from 1.50 to 1.58 financings per month. The median increased from one deal to 1.5, which is better, but we also recorded three current months with no deals compared with two previously.

Capital is even more uneven. Median monthly funding increased to $17.6M from $9.88M, while the biggest current month reached $546.65M because one giant transaction can overwhelm the monthly total.

Six current months finished above the current deal-count median, compared with five in the previous period. Six months were above their own capital median in both periods.

There is more money in a typical active month, but no smooth upward funding curve. Social commerce still moves in bursts.

Metric	Current L12M	Previous 12M
Average deals/month	1.58	1.50
Median deals/month	1.5	1.0
Average capital/month	$81.60M	$40.71M
Median capital/month	$17.60M	$9.88M
Zero-deal months	3	2
Highest monthly deal count	5	4
Highest monthly capital	$546.65M	$265M
Months above own capital median	6	6

Is social commerce becoming a mature market, or is it still mostly early-stage?

Social commerce currently has two maturity levels at once: a large seed layer underneath a small group of companies that already behave like scaled commerce platforms.

Nearly half of current deals are below $5M, and more than half are Seed rounds. New companies are still being created around WhatsApp commerce, live selling, creator infrastructure and social-first storefronts.

Higher up the stack, the conversation has changed. Whatnot is raising hundreds of millions to scale seller businesses and global demand. ShopMy is valued at $1.5B. Tilt is raising after an eightfold increase since its previous Series A. Wishlink and Levanta are building infrastructure across large creator and merchant networks.

Strategic investors are also entering at this more developed layer, from Vinted Ventures around Tilt to Bright Pixel around Duel. Those companies are talking about geographic expansion, retail integrations, trust systems, AI tooling, merchant productivity and repeat purchasing rather than simply proving that people will shop through social channels.

As seen above, the seed market has actually expanded at the same time. Calling social commerce either an early-stage market or a mature market misses the point: several parts of the industry have reached scale while a new startup layer continues forming underneath them.

What's the biggest mistake people make when reading social commerce funding numbers?

The easiest way to misread social commerce funding is to treat the 100% increase in dollars as a broad-based boom.

The period certainly produced more capital, and the $545M Whatnot Series G is a major financing by any standard. But capital outside the biggest rounds did not accelerate. The number of funded companies did not expand either.

A better reading combines the facts that survive the outlier test. The typical round became much larger. More companies received their first financing. Europe produced far more deals. Live commerce gained several funded companies rather than only one. At the same time, the middle of the round-size distribution weakened and late-stage companies captured most of the money.

As pointed out above, Whatnot alone represents 78.6% of current funding. That concentration makes the headline total a poor shortcut for the health of the entire market.

The interesting story is underneath the headline: social commerce has become easier to fund at the experimental end, much easier to fund at enormous scale once a company is working, and less obviously improved in between.

What really changed over the last 12 months?

Social commerce funding became more polarized. Large-company financing accelerated dramatically, while capital below the megadeal layer was roughly flat to slightly down. The market has more money in it, but most startups cannot access the part that created the headline increase.

Startup formation improved. First financings rose from five to seven, their typical size increased, and seed activity became more common. As seen above, overall company breadth stayed flat, so this is renewal inside the ecosystem rather than a big expansion in the total number of funded businesses.

Live social commerce made the clearest category move. Whatnot dominates the capital, but Tilt, Siin and Rwaj give the category a broader base than it had a year ago. Recent operating data from Whatnot and TikTok also makes the investor interest easier to understand: live shopping is producing substantially more real transaction activity in Western markets.

Creator commerce also looks stronger at the company-quality level. ShopMy, Wishlink and Levanta are raising around measurable sales infrastructure, larger creator networks and deeper retailer integrations. The category is becoming more performance-oriented rather than simply attracting more startups.

Europe broadened sharply while North America kept control of the money. Eight European companies were funded in the current period, yet North American companies captured nine dollars out of every ten invested. Europe is currently producing startups; the US is producing the giant rounds.

Finally, investors appear comfortable financing both ends of the market. They are writing $1M-$3M checks into new commerce models while committing hundreds of millions to platforms that can already prove scale. The weak spot sits between those two groups. That is the structural change that a simple comparison of annual funding totals would miss.