Faire (wholesale marketplace)

Faire’s four founders, Max Rhodes, Marcelo Cortes, Daniele Perito and Jeffrey Kolovson, worked together at Square from 2013 to 2016. Rhodes led products including Square Capital and Square Cash; Cortes had been a senior software engineer at GoogleGoogleGoogle is an American technology company founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin and incorporated in 1998. It became an Alphabet subsidiary in 2015. Its businesses include internet search, advertising, software platforms, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence.Open the full entry before Square; Perito was director of security and risk engineering at Square; and Kolovson led Square’s retail team and ran operations for Caviar.⁠[1]

Before settling on a wholesale marketplace, the team considered ideas ranging from car insurance for low-income migrants to a dental drill, and at one point sold high-end umbrellas. They found it easy to sell the umbrellas to department stores but had no way to sell online to the small retail shops where the product sold best, which led to the idea of an online wholesale marketplace.⁠[1]

Faire was founded in 2017 and is headquartered in San Francisco. The founders took part in Y Combinator’s Winter 2017 (W17) batch, relocating to Mountain View, California, for the program; Cortes later returned to Kitchener-Waterloo in Canada, where he led the engineering team.⁠[2][3][4][5]

To overcome the chicken-and-egg problem of a new two-sided marketplace, Faire introduced net 60 payment terms for retailers in late 2017, letting them trial products and return unsold merchandise after 60 days. After return rates ran high and some accounts defaulted, the company added credit limits and a ranking system for wholesalers and products.⁠[1]

On December 13, 2018 Faire announced $100 million across two rounds: a $40 million Series B led by Alex Taussig of Lightspeed Venture PartnersLightspeed Venture PartnersLightspeed Venture Partners backs companies from seed through late-stage financing. Its website distinguishes Lightspeed Management Company (LSVP) from Lightspeed India Partners (LSIP): the two are separately operated investment advisers, with the U.S., European, and Israeli offices belonging to LSVP and the India and Southeast Asia offices belonging to LSIP.Open the full entry and a $60 million Series C led by Y Combinator’s Continuity fund, with Founders FundFounders FundFounders Fund is a venture capital firm founded in San Francisco in 2005 by Peter Thiel and his former PayPal colleagues Ken Howery and Luke Nosek. Run by partners who were entrepreneurs themselves, it argues that founders should keep more control and is known for betting on difficult technology projects in areas such as space, defense, and artificial intelligence. It was Palantir’s first institutional investor, has invested in SpaceX many times since 2008, and its other notable investments include Facebook, Airbnb, Stripe, and Anduril; as of March 2026 it had raised nine early-stage funds and four growth funds.Open the full entry and DST GlobalDST GlobalDST Global is a technology investment firm founded by Yuri Milner in 2009 that focuses on growth-stage investments in internet companies worldwide; it has invested in companies including Facebook, Twitter, Alibaba, JD.com, Airbnb and Spotify, and in 2026 led the US$400 million Series B round of the AI visual content company Higgsfield.Open the full entry joining as new investors. The company had previously raised $16 million, and its backers included Kirsten Green of Forerunner Ventures, Keith Rabois of Khosla VenturesKhosla VenturesKhosla Ventures (KV) is an American venture capital firm founded in 2004 by Vinod Khosla, the founding CEO of Sun Microsystems, and headquartered in Menlo Park, California. It made heavy early bets on clean technology, became OpenAI’s first venture capital investor in 2019, and its portfolio also includes companies such as DoorDash, Block (formerly Square), Impossible Foods, and Rocket Lab.Open the full entry and Alfred LinAlfred LinAlfred Lin is an American venture capitalist who has been a partner at Sequoia Capital since 2010 and, since November 2025, one of the firm’s co-stewards together with Pat Grady. Before joining Sequoia he was an executive at LinkExchange, Tellme Networks, and Zappos, companies acquired by Microsoft and Amazon; at Sequoia he has represented the firm on the boards of companies including Airbnb and DoorDash.Open the full entry of Sequoia CapitalSequoia CapitalSequoia Capital is a venture capital firm founded by Don Valentine in 1972, investing from the seed stage through the growth stage. Its historical investments include Apple, Cisco, Google, YouTube, Airbnb, and Stripe; in 2021 it introduced the Sequoia Capital Fund structure, which can continue to hold public securities, and in 2023 its regional businesses became independent brands and partnerships.Open the full entry.⁠[6]

Faire said at the time that 15,000 retailers were actively buying on its platform from 2,000 brands, with $100 million in run-rate sales; the company was headquartered in San Francisco with an office in Waterloo, Ontario.⁠[6]

In October 2020 Faire raised a Series E led by Sequoia Capital at a valuation of about $2.5 billion, and in June 2021 a Series F, also led by Sequoia, at $7 billion. On November 16, 2021 it announced a $400 million Series G at a $12.4 billion valuation, co-led by new investor Durable Capital Partners and existing investors D1 Capital Partners and Dragoneer Investment Group, its third major round in 13 months.⁠[5]

After the Series G Faire’s total funding exceeded $1 billion, from investors including Baillie Gifford, DST Global, Forerunner Ventures, Founders Fund, Khosla Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Norwest Venture Partners, Sequoia Capital, Wellington Management and Y Combinator. Its marketplace then connected more than 300,000 retailers in North America and Europe with over 40,000 brands from 80 countries; it had expanded into 15 markets in Europe and the UK earlier in 2021 and had about 700 employees.⁠[5]

In May 2022 Faire raised a $416 million Series G extension led by Sequoia and Y Combinator, valuing the company at $12.6 billion and bringing its total funding to $1.7 billion.⁠[1]

In October 2022 Faire laid off about 7% of its staff, which then totaled about 1,200.⁠[7]

In September 2023 Faire and Shopify announced a partnership making Faire “the recommended wholesale marketplace for Shopify,” with ShopifyShopifyShopify is a commerce software company that originated in Ottawa, Canada, providing merchants with tools for online stores, physical retail, payments, orders and inventory management. The business began with Snowdevil, an online snowboard store founded in 2004 by Tobias Lütke and others, and the standalone e-commerce platform launched in 2006. The company went public in 2015 and now trades under the ticker SHOP on Nasdaq and the Toronto Stock Exchange.Open the full entry also becoming a Faire shareholder.⁠[7]

In November 2023 Faire laid off about 20% of its staff, roughly 250 people, across the company, affecting engineering, product, design and data science. The company said it had built a multi-layered management structure to support its pace of hiring and restructured to align teams with its “long-term vision” after hiring slowed.⁠[7][4]

On November 17, 2025 Faire announced an employee tender offer at a $5.2 billion valuation, led by WCM Investment Management with participation from Baillie Gifford and True North Fund. The company said it was annualizing more than $500 million in revenue, expected nearly $3 billion in gross merchandise value for the year, grew more than 40% year over year in the third quarter after eight consecutive quarters of accelerating GMV growth, and that its ads business exceeded 5% of revenue two years after launch.⁠[8][9]

It also set out AI plans, including an AI buying assistant for retailers and an AI consultant for brands, and a buying experience that lets retailers combine products from multiple brands into one order shipped from a single warehouse.⁠[8][9]

As of November 2026 Faire’s executive team included co-founder and CEO Max Rhodes, co-founder and CTO Marcelo Cortes, co-founder and COO Jeff Kolovson, CFO Lauren Cooks Levitan and Chief Product Officer Ami Vora.⁠[10]

Faire: Official website: https://www.faire.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[11]

X: Public account: https://x.com/faire_wholesale (opens in a new window).⁠[11]