Whop

Whop co-founders Steven SchwartzSteven SchwartzSteven Schwartz is an entrepreneur and the co-founder and chief executive officer of the online business platform Whop; as of October 2026, Whop is valued at $5.1 billion.Open the full entry and Cameron Zoub met at age 13 in a Facebook group devoted to limited-edition sneakers. Together they launched one of the early “sneaker bots,” software that places orders for limited-edition sneakers before they sell out, and used the profits to keep building and selling other software. In late 2018 the two also started an IT agency that built websites and apps for clients.⁠[1][1][2]

The two later teamed up with software developer Jack Sharkey to build products for small businesses and set up a makeshift marketplace where people could buy and sell software for free, but scammers overran it; Schwartz recalled that buyers and sellers had to make forum posts, often got scammed, needed a middleman and faced unclear software pricing. The three then set out to build an improved marketplace, which became Whop.⁠[1][1][1]

In March 2021, Steven Schwartz, Cameron Zoub and Jack Sharkey launched Whop, which Schwartz then described as an “EtsyEtsyEtsy (Etsy, Inc.) is a U.S. public company headquartered in Brooklyn, New York, that operates Etsy, an online marketplace centered on handmade goods, vintage items, and creative products. Founded in 2005, it listed on Nasdaq in 2015 and moved its stock listing to the New York Stock Exchange in 2025. The company acquired the music gear marketplace Reverb, the secondhand fashion marketplace Depop, and the Brazilian handmade marketplace Elo7, then sold all three between 2023 and 2026, returning to operating only the core Etsy marketplace.Open the full entry for software products.” With vetting processes and standards, the platform offered a more trustworthy channel for buying and selling software than online forums.⁠[2][2][2]

On July 20, 2023, Whop announced a $17 million Series A round with participation from Insight Partners, The Chainsmokers, Peter ThielPeter ThielPeter Thiel is an American entrepreneur and investor, a co-founder of PayPal and Palantir Technologies, and the first outside investor in Facebook. He is a partner at the venture capital firm Founders Fund and founded the Thiel Fellowship, which funds young people to leave college and build new things; his public skepticism of higher education, his support for Trump in 2016, and his funding of litigation against Gawker Media have drawn controversy.Open the full entry and others, valuing the company at more than $100 million. At the time the platform had about 1 million customers and 3,000 sellers and had processed $100 million in transactions to date, with a team of about 20; products on the platform ranged from sports betting picks, food, travel and credit card deals to social-skills tips, and it targeted influencers and content creators.⁠[1][1][1][1][1]

As of June 2024, Steven Schwartz said Whop was valued at about $250 million, processed about $400 million in transactions a year and was used by about 4 million people a month; the company had about 50 employees, most of whom worked at its Brooklyn headquarters. Schwartz said Whop’s goal was to give 1 million people a “sustainable income” of $2,000 a month within five years.⁠[3][3][3][3]

On September 18, 2025, Whop launched Whop Payments, its own payment infrastructure, which connects to multiple payment processors at once and automatically reroutes declined transactions to other processors; sellers can withdraw funds by bank transfer, Bitcoin, stablecoins or digital wallets such as Venmo, with instant payouts in 241 territories. This marked Whop’s shift from relying on external payment services to operating its own payment system.⁠[4][4][4][4]

On February 25, 2026, Tether’s investment arm Tether Investments announced a strategic investment in Whop; Whop would use Tether’s open-source Wallet Development Kit (WDK), letting users choose settlement in USD₮ or USA₮, and offer its community a self-custodial digital wallet. Whop later disclosed that the strategic investment was $200 million at a $1.6 billion valuation.⁠[5][6][6][6][7]

When the investment was announced, the Whop platform had more than 18.4 million users, participants earned about $3 billion a year in total, and gross transaction volume was growing about 25% month over month; the new funds were to support expansion in Latin America, Europe and Asia-Pacific. Steven Schwartz said Tether’s investment would accelerate the company’s vision of building “the world’s largest internet market.”⁠[6][6][6][6]

On May 12, 2026, Whop launched Whop Ads, a built-in advertising product integrated with MetaMetaMeta (Meta Platforms, Inc.) is a publicly listed American technology company, renamed from Facebook in 2021, that operates social communication, digital advertising, virtual reality, smart glasses and artificial intelligence businesses.Open the full entry that lets businesses run and manage Meta ads directly from the Whop dashboard; Steven Schwartz called it “phase one,” with other major platforms to follow. Whop Ads is led by Nicholas Motamedi, whose Fortnite minigame studio Hidden Studios went from partner to investee to acquisition by Whop.⁠[8][8][8][8]

On May 27, 2026, Whop launched Whop Cards, business cards that let businesses spend directly from their Whop balance without first withdrawing to an external bank account. The cards are funded through Whop’s stablecoin infrastructure, card payments are processed over the Visa network, and eligible purchases earn up to 5% cash back.⁠[9][9][9]

As of June 2026, Whop had raised about $272 million in total, including a Series B of more than $50 million led by Bain Capital Ventures; the company said the platform had about 22 million users and supported about $4 billion in annual commerce across 145 countries, and that it had minted more than 650 millionaires. The company then had 120 full-time employees and 40 open roles.⁠[10][10][10][10][10][10]

On July 1, 2026, Replit, an AI software creation platform with 50 million users, brought Whop’s embedded checkout components to its users, letting them collect payments directly for the projects they build.⁠[11]

On August 4, 2026, Whop announced Whop CLI, a command-line tool through which business owners or their AI agents can use simple commands to access the platform’s full API, listing products, setting prices, launching ad campaigns, checking sales stats and moving money.⁠[12][12]

In late August 2026, SpaceXAI named Whop as Grok’s first full-stack business connector; on September 2 the integration expanded to Cursor and Grok Bot, allowing users to create products, set up checkout, run ads and pull business data directly from a chat or coding environment.⁠[13][13][13]

On October 1, 2026, Whop launched Economic Intelligence, which uses data from millions of transactions on the platform to recommend each business’s next move, such as changing a price, launching an ad campaign or building a website, and can hand the action with one click to Whop AI or the operator’s preferred AI agent. Whop said that in beta testing with more than 14,000 businesses, combined sales of businesses using the feature for a month grew 31.8% over the prior month.⁠[14][14][14][14][14]

On October 21, 2026, Whop announced a $200 million Series D round led by 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 and Shopify VenturesShopify VenturesShopify Ventures is the venture capital arm of the Canadian e-commerce software company Shopify, investing mainly at the seed through Series B stages in technology companies that serve merchants, developers and entrepreneurs; in October 2026 it co-led Whop’s Series D round with Sequoia Capital.Open the full entry at a $5.1 billion valuation, its second fundraise of the year, with the capital going to global expansion and R&D. Sequoia Capital partner Doug LeoneDoug LeoneDoug Leone is an Italian-born American venture capitalist and partner at Sequoia Capital who was long involved in managing the firm and developing its international business. He began his career in technology sales, joined Sequoia in 1988, and was involved in the development of companies such as Meraki, ServiceNow, and Nubank. In 2026, he continued to focus on AI and enterprise software and serves as chairman of the board of Cresta.Open the full entry said Whop was doing about half a billion dollars in revenue and was helping people who cannot find a job create businesses.⁠[7][7][7][7][7]

At the time of the announcement, about 25,000 business operators generated $550 million a month on Whop, and more than 50,000 other people earned an income each month by providing services to those businesses; Whop said the platform had facilitated more than $7 billion in transactions across 185 countries. The company is headquartered in Palo Alto, California, with offices in New York. Steven Schwartz said that because businesses are the primary conduit by which people earn money and create value, Whop focuses on them as its primary customer.⁠[7][7][7][7][7]

Whop: Official website: https://whop.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[7]

X: Public account: https://x.com/whop (opens in a new window)⁠[15]

LinkedInLinkedInLinkedIn is a social networking platform for professionals. It was founded in 2002 by Reid Hoffman and others, launched in 2003, and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2011; after Microsoft acquired it for approximately $26.2 billion in 2016, it became a wholly owned Microsoft subsidiary. Its revenue comes from membership subscriptions, advertising, and recruitment solutions.Open the full entry: Public profile: https://www.linkedin.com/company/whop-io/ (opens in a new window)⁠[15]

YouTubeYouTubeYouTube is Google’s video-sharing and creator platform, founded in 2005 by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim and acquired by Google in 2006. Built around video uploading, viewing, and creator earnings, the platform has developed Shorts, YouTube Music, Premium, YouTube TV, and products for children, and is headquartered in San Bruno, California, United States.Open the full entry: Public channel: https://www.youtube.com/@WhopIO (opens in a new window)⁠[15]