What are the latest funding trends in social commerce?

All funding deals in the social commerce market over the last years

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 booming right now?

Social commerce funding looks much stronger in dollars today, but fewer companies are actually raising money.

We counted $634.2 million of funding from January 1 through September 21, 2026, up 40% from the same period last year and more than 2.5 times the comparable 2024 total. Deal activity moved the other way: 10 companies raised this year, compared with 14 in 2025 and 17 in 2024.

The gap gets much harder to ignore once we take out the very large rounds. Funding excluding deals above $50 million falls to $89.2 million, down 19.3% year over year. The median round still increased from $6.9 million to $8.85 million, so companies that do raise are generally getting somewhat bigger checks.

Right now, the market looks stronger in capital intensity and weaker in breadth. That split drives almost everything else happening underneath the headline.

Market measure	2026 YTD	2025 YTD	2024 YTD
Deals	10	14	17
Unique companies	10	14	17
Total capital	$634.2M	$452.9M	$249.9M
Capital excluding >$50M	$89.2M	$110.4M	$105.9M
Capital excluding >$100M	$89.2M	$187.9M	$105.9M
Median round	$8.85M	$6.90M	$5.00M
Average disclosed round	$63.4M	$34.8M	$15.6M
Largest round	$545M	$265M	$144M
First-financing share	40.0%	21.4%	11.8%
Early-stage deal share	60.0%	50.0%	88.2%

Is Whatnot basically creating the whole social commerce funding boom?

Yes. Whatnot explains almost the entire increase in social commerce funding this year.

Whatnot raised $545 million in its Series G, equal to 85.9% of all the capital we counted in 2026. Without that financing, this year's total drops to $89.2 million. For comparison, the equivalent 2025 market had $187.9 million after removing rounds above $100 million.

The concentration goes beyond one ratio. The three biggest rounds account for 93.5% of 2026 funding, and the five biggest account for 98.6%. There is only one deal above $50 million this year, so this is not a wave of megarounds. One exceptionally large company is pulling the aggregate number upward.

Whatnot also has operating numbers that help explain why investors were willing to write such a large check. In its latest Series G announcement, the company said sellers had already sold more during the first half of 2026 than during all of 2025. More than 650,000 people were joining Whatnot each week, while the number of sellers that had crossed $1 million in lifetime sales had more than doubled over the previous year.

The funding concentration is extreme, but the company behind it is also scaling at a level that currently looks unusual within social commerce.

Are fewer social commerce startups getting funded these days?

Yes. Social commerce investors are funding a noticeably smaller group of companies right now.

We found 10 financed companies in the current period, down from 14 last year and 17 two years ago. Each of the 10 deals belongs to a different company, so repeated financings inside the period are not artificially reducing the company count.

That gives us a fairly clean reading of breadth. Around 29% fewer companies received funding than last year, and around 41% fewer than in 2024.

There is still meaningful startup activity underneath that decline, particularly among first-time financings. But if the question is simply whether more social commerce businesses are getting venture money today, the answer is clearly no.

Are normal social commerce rounds getting bigger?

Yes. The typical social commerce financing is bigger than it was one or two years ago, even though the average is badly distorted by Whatnot.

The median round has climbed from $5 million in 2024 to $6.9 million in 2025 and $8.85 million this year. That is a 28% year-over-year increase.

The individual deals show why the market feels so uneven. Wassist raised $1.1 million, Rwaj $1.2 million, Dimension $1.65 million, nFuse $2 million and Siin $3 million. Further up, District raised $14.7 million, Wishlink $17.5 million, Levanta $22 million and Tilt $26 million. Then Whatnot jumps all the way to $545 million.

The $63.4 million average round therefore tells us very little about what most founders are experiencing. The $8.85 million median is far closer to a typical financing today.

Company	Round	Stage	Category
Whatnot	$545.0M	Series D+	Live Social Commerce
Tilt	$26.0M	Unknown	Live Social Commerce
Levanta	$22.0M	Series B	Creator Led Commerce
Wishlink	$17.5M	Series B	Creator Led Commerce
District	$14.7M	Seed	Social Commerce Platforms
Siin	$3.0M	Seed	Live Social Commerce
nFuse	$2.0M	Seed	DM Commerce Tools
Dimension	$1.65M	Seed	Social Commerce Platforms
Rwaj	$1.2M	Seed	Live Social Commerce
Wassist	$1.1M	Seed	DM Commerce Tools

Is social commerce funding moving toward late-stage companies?

Social commerce funding is heavily skewed toward late-stage companies in dollars, while most actual deals are still happening at Seed.

Six of the 10 financings we found this year are Seed rounds. Seed therefore represents 60% of deal activity, up from 42.9% in the comparable 2025 period.

Money is distributed very differently. Those Seed financings account for only about 3.7% of the capital. Whatnot's single late-stage round absorbs 85.9%.

The middle of the market is fairly thin. We found no Series A financing, two Series B rounds and only two deals between $20 million and $50 million.

Founders are still starting companies and getting early checks, while most serious capital is landing with businesses that have already proved themselves. There is a pronounced gap between experimentation at the bottom and scale capital at the top.

Stage or round size	Share of 2026 deals	Share of 2026 capital
Seed	60.0%	3.7%
Series A	0%	0%
Series B	20.0%	6.2%
Series D+	10.0%	85.9%
Unknown stage	10.0%	4.1%
Below $5M	50.0%	1.4%
$5M to <$20M	20.0%	5.1%
$20M to <$50M	20.0%	7.6%
$50M to <$100M	0%	0%
$100M+	10.0%	85.9%

Is live shopping now the part of social commerce investors care about most?

Yes. Live Social Commerce has made the clearest jump in investor attention this year.

Four of the 10 deals we tracked belong to Live Social Commerce: Whatnot, Tilt, Siin and Rwaj. That gives the category 40% of all financings, versus only 7.1% in the same part of 2025.

The capital share reaches 90.7%, although Whatnot obviously inflates that figure. The change in deal count is more useful here. We have a giant US marketplace, a European live-auction platform and two younger Gulf companies all raising within the same period.

The comparison with 2024 adds some context. Live Social Commerce accounted for 17.6% of deals two years ago, dropped to 7.1% last year and has now reached 40%. That is a big enough jump to stand out even in a small market.

Among all the category shifts we measured, live shopping is where the change in actual funding activity looks strongest.

Does live-commerce funding still look strong without Whatnot?

Yes in deal activity, much less so in dollars. Live-commerce funding has spread across several companies, while Whatnot still takes almost all the category's capital.

Whatnot, Tilt, Siin and Rwaj raised $575.2 million between them. Remove Whatnot and $30.2 million remains.

Tilt is the clearest company showing that the story goes beyond one US leader. It raised $26 million and said it had grown eightfold since its 2024 Series A. Buyers now spend more than an hour a day on the app, 70% return week over week and 70% of monthly GMV comes from repeat buyers. Tilt currently operates across the UK, Italy, Spain and Poland.

Further down the funding curve, Siin raised $3 million in total funding to expand live commerce in the Gulf, while Rwaj raised $1.2 million to grow a live-shopping and auction marketplace in Saudi Arabia.

These deals are much smaller, but they show that investors are testing live shopping across several markets and company stages. The huge dollar total remains a Whatnot story; the increase in funded companies is broader.

Why are investors paying more attention to live shopping now?

Live shopping is getting more investor attention because the format is showing stronger commercial traction across several platforms and markets.

TikTok Shop offers one recent example. During its 2026 6.6 campaign in Singapore, TikTok reported an 80% year-over-year increase in platform GMV, twice as much livestream GMV, twice as many daily livestreams and a 167% increase in livestream views. Affiliate LIVE GMV increased 170% versus an average day during the campaign.

Whatnot gives us another type of evidence. Its latest update points to rapid seller growth and a platform where hundreds of thousands of new users are still arriving every week. Tilt adds a European example with high repeat purchasing and more than an hour of daily buyer engagement.

Infrastructure is also forming around the format. District launched publicly after three years of development with more than 1,000 businesses already using its commerce infrastructure. Its product lets merchants build experiences around livestreams, auctions, communities, marketplaces and subscriptions instead of depending entirely on a single marketplace.

None of those company-reported figures guarantees that live shopping will scale everywhere. But investors now have more real usage, repeat behavior and merchant activity to look at than when live commerce was largely discussed as a Chinese-market phenomenon.

Is creator commerce losing momentum?

Creator Led Commerce is getting fewer deals this year, although the companies that do raise are getting much larger rounds.

The category fell from five financings in the comparable 2025 period to two today. Its deal share dropped from 35.7% to 20%.

Those two financings are substantial. Levanta raised a $22 million Series B and Wishlink raised $17.5 million in another Series B, giving the category a $19.75 million median round.

Levanta is a useful example of what investors are backing now. The company says it has expanded from its Amazon affiliate roots into creator-commerce infrastructure spanning Amazon, Walmart, Shopify and other retail channels. Around the time of its Series B, Levanta reported 80% year-over-year revenue growth in 2026 and access to more than 90,000 vetted creators.

Wishlink is following a similar maturation path in India. Its Series B is funding further expansion of its creator and brand networks and the technology connecting content, product discovery and commerce.

Creator commerce looks more selective these days. Capital is still available, but it is landing with companies that have already built meaningful networks and measurable commerce infrastructure.

Are DM commerce startups having a harder time raising?

Yes. DM Commerce Tools have weakened sharply in our social commerce funding data this year.

The category went from four deals in the comparable 2025 period to two in 2026. Capital dropped from $23.8 million to $3.1 million.

The two current deals are nFuse at $2 million and Wassist at $1.1 million. Both are early-stage European companies using messaging as the interface for commerce automation. Wassist lets businesses deploy AI agents on WhatsApp without engineers, while nFuse turns WhatsApp, Viber, SMS, voice notes and images into structured B2B orders.

Last year's group had considerably more scale and geographical variety, including Nectar Social, OmniChat, Gallabox and YaVendió.

Messaging commerce itself is still active, especially as AI agents become easier to deploy. Venture funding into dedicated DM-commerce companies, however, is currently much thinner than it was a year ago.

Can brand-new social commerce startups still get funded?

Yes. New social commerce startups are still getting financed, and first-time financings have actually become more common this year.

Four of the 10 companies in our 2026 sample are first financings in the history we could establish: District, nFuse, Wassist and Rwaj. The count was three during the same period last year and two in 2024.

That means first financings have moved from 11.8% of deals to 21.4% and now 40%.

The checks remain fairly small. These four businesses raised $19 million combined, and the median first financing is only $1.6 million. District's $14.7 million Seed round accounts for most of that total.

A new cohort is getting a chance, but investors are keeping many of those initial bets small. That is how first-financing activity can improve while total deal count still falls.

Are social commerce investors saving the big checks for proven companies?

Yes. Existing social commerce companies are receiving almost all of the money, and their follow-on rounds have become much larger.

Six of this year's 10 transactions are follow-ons. Together they account for $615.2 million, roughly 97% of the total funding we tracked.

The median follow-on round reached $19.75 million, up from $7.85 million in the comparable 2025 period and $7 million in 2024. The difference is visible across several companies: Wishlink moved into a $17.5 million Series B, Levanta raised $22 million after its earlier Series A, Tilt followed its $18 million 2024 round with another $26 million, and Whatnot moved into an entirely different financing bracket.

First financings, by comparison, still have a median around $1.6 million.

Our first-financing classification uses the public financing history we could establish for each company, so it should be read as a carefully researched directional measure rather than a claim that every historical financing event is observable. The size gap between new and previously funded companies is large enough that the overall conclusion is still clear.

Is social commerce funding becoming more global?

Social commerce funding is becoming more geographically varied in deal count, while North America still dominates the dollars.

North America represents four of this year's 10 deals, roughly the same share it held in recent comparable periods. Those four companies account for $583.4 million, or 92% of current funding, largely because Whatnot sits in the region.

Europe has changed much more in company count. It went from one deal in the comparable 2025 period to three this year: Tilt, nFuse and Wassist. European companies now represent 30% of deals, although only 4.6% of the capital.

The Middle East also contributes two financings through Siin and Rwaj. Both are live-shopping companies, which makes the Gulf part of the broader live-commerce rotation we are seeing today.

Asia-Pacific has moved the other way, falling from 35.7% of deals last year to 10% currently. Wishlink is the region's only company in the current period. Latin America has no qualifying deal in our 2026 sample after contributing two in the same part of 2025.

Region	2026 deals	Deal share	Capital	Capital share
North America	4	40%	$583.4M	92.0%
Europe	3	30%	$29.1M	4.6%
Middle East	2	20%	$4.2M	0.7%
Asia-Pacific	1	10%	$17.5M	2.8%
Latin America	0	0%	$0	0%
Africa	0	0%	$0	0%
Total	10	100%	$634.2M	100%

Are strategic investors starting to move into live commerce?

There is some strategic money moving into live commerce, but two deals are not enough to call it a market-wide shift yet.

We identified strategic investors in two of the 10 current financings, and both deals involve live shopping.

Vinted Ventures joined Tilt's $26 million round. The fit is fairly direct: Vinted runs one of Europe's largest second-hand marketplaces, while Tilt is building a live-selling experience that increasingly overlaps with resale categories. Vinted Ventures itself was launched to invest in Series A to C businesses across re-commerce and related infrastructure.

Vinted's broader business also has the scale to make that participation interesting. The group reported €10.8 billion of GMV for 2025, up 47%, alongside €1.1 billion of revenue. This is an established marketplace operator putting money into a newer way of buying and selling second-hand goods.

Shift Group participated in Siin's funding alongside VentureSouq, with the investment tied to a commercial relationship around live commerce in the Gulf.

Lead investors remain fragmented more broadly. We found no disclosed lead or co-lead appearing on more than one current deal. The 2026 list includes Andreessen Horowitz, Kindred Ventures, Volition Capital, Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia & India, VentureSouq, Shift Group, Playfair, ICONIQ, Lightspeed and Avra.

One caveat is worth keeping in mind: lead disclosure is available for only six of the 10 financings this year, down from 10 of 14 last year. We should therefore be much more confident about the two identified strategic deals than about any apparent decline in lead-investor breadth.

Has 2026 already caught up with previous full years of social commerce funding?

In dollars, 2026 is already close to the whole of 2025 and far above 2024; in deal activity, it is nowhere close.

Full-year 2025 produced 23 deals and $798 million of funding. The current 2026 period has already reached 79.5% of those dollars with only 10 deals, equal to 43.5% of last year's full-year deal count.

The comparison with 2024 is even more extreme. Current funding equals about 222% of the entire 2024 dollar total, while the 10 deals represent only 47.6% of that year's 21 transactions.

These full-year comparisons are useful mainly because they show how unusually capital-heavy 2026 has become. They should not be read as equivalent time periods, and we would not mechanically annualize the current figures. A market containing a $545 million financing can move hundreds of millions of dollars without producing anything close to the same increase in company activity.

What is actually changing in social commerce funding?

Social commerce funding is becoming more concentrated, more selective and much more interested in live shopping.

The biggest change is the separation between funding dollars and funding activity. Capital is up 40% year over year, while deals and funded companies are down around 29%. Once the largest financing is removed, underlying capital is also lower than last year.

Live Social Commerce is the clearest category rotation. Its share of deals has jumped from 7.1% to 40%, with financings spanning Whatnot, Tilt, Siin and Rwaj. Recent operating numbers from Whatnot, Tilt and TikTok Shop make that renewed interest easier to understand.

New companies are still entering the market. First financings have risen from two to three to four across the three comparable periods. The money flowing to those newcomers remains small, while follow-on companies are raising increasingly large rounds.

Creator Led Commerce shows another version of the same selectivity: fewer companies are raising, but Levanta and Wishlink both secured sizeable Series B rounds. DM Commerce Tools are having a much weaker year, with both deal count and capital falling sharply.

Geographically, Europe and the Middle East are showing up more often in the company count. North America still takes almost all the money because its biggest companies operate on a completely different funding scale.

Taken together, 2026 currently looks like a market where investors still want exposure to social commerce, but they are separating their bets more aggressively. Small checks are funding new experiments, particularly around live and AI-enabled commerce, while the largest pools of capital are going to companies that can already show scale, repeat usage or established distribution.