Whop
Unicorn · $1.6BFounded 2021 · 589 employees on LinkedIn · 8 known investors
Whop provides APIs and embedded components for developers to integrate checkout and payment functionality into their applications without building complex infrastructure from scratch.
Also known as Whop Marketplace · Whop, Inc. · Whop.com
Founders & leadership
Whop was founded in 2021 by Steven Schwartz, Jack Sharkey, and Cameron Zoub.
Investors · 8
Also in the syndicate · 2
Funding
SEC filings, press & company announcements$200M disclosed across 1 of 6 rounds · 2023–2026
- Undisclosed amountstrategic investmentFeb 2026 · 2 sourcesSource ↗
- $200MraisedFeb 2026 · 2 sourcesSource ↗
- Undisclosed amountSeries AJul 2023Source ↗
Source: company announcements and press reports — follow each round's link for the claim.
Valuation · disclosed
Disclosed eventsSource: SEC prospectus filings, and round valuations the company or its investors disclosed — follow each entry's link for the claim.
Company profile
researched Aug 2026Whop, Inc. operates a social commerce platform and online marketplace that lets entrepreneurs, influencers and small businesses sell digital products, memberships, online communities and software directly to consumers. Sellers build customized storefronts, called "whops," which can be configured as paid communities, online courses, coaching programs, software subscriptions, service agencies, ticketed events or marketplaces. Each storefront is assembled from modular apps — chat, courses, forums, help desk, content — installed from a Whop App Store launched in September 2025, alongside product pages, flexible pricing (monthly, annual, per-seat or one-time) and built-in payments.
Alongside the seller tools, Whop runs a consumer-facing "Discover" marketplace where buyers browse and join whops, and a set of earning mechanisms for users, including Bounties (paying users for promotional tasks) and Content Rewards, which connects brands with "clippers" who redistribute short-form video on a pay-per-view basis. Content Rewards has been used by the music industry for clipping campaigns involving Mumford & Sons, Brandi Carlile and John Summit. The company also exposes its infrastructure to developers through embeddable components and APIs — including a @whop/checkout React package for checkout, plus wallet and chat components — and through the Whop Payments Network sold to external businesses. A financial services layer, Whop Finance, began with Whop Treasury, which lets users earn yield on balances held as USDT0 with deposits via card or crypto through MoonPay. Whop distributes a consumer mobile app on Google Play with more than one million downloads.
Founding story
Whop was founded in March 2021 by Steven Schwartz, Cameron Zoub and Jack Sharkey. Schwartz and Zoub met as middle-school-age teenagers in a Facebook group devoted to sneaker reselling and wrote sneaker bots used to buy limited-edition footwear, launching several other ventures before conceiving of Whop as a marketplace for digital goods; Sharkey joined as the software developer. Schwartz studied at New York University's Stern School of Business, interned at Accenture in Singapore, and graduated in 2021, the year Whop launched.
Business model
Whop monetizes transactions on its platform. It historically charged a base 3% fee on direct customer purchases made through creator-owned links and a 30% fee on sales originating from its Discover marketplace; per Sacra, the marketplace fee has since been eliminated (reduced to 0%) with instant marketplace approval, trading high-margin marketplace revenue for GMV growth. Additional revenue comes from a layered fee stack: card processing at 2.7% + $0.30 domestically (enterprise rates as low as 2.5% + $0.30), +1.5% for international cards, +1% currency conversion, optional payment orchestration at 0.8% per transaction, 15% per successful BNPL financing transaction, $0.07 per transaction fraud prevention, $15-29 dispute fees, and payout fees ranging from $2.50 for next-day ACH to 5% + $1 for instant crypto or Venmo withdrawals. The estimated blended take rate rose from 4.0% in 2022 to about 5.5% in early 2025 [7].
Transaction-based: percentage fees on creator sales, payment processing and orchestration fees, financing (BNPL) commissions, fraud-prevention and dispute fees, payout fees, and infrastructure sold to external merchants through the Whop Payments Network. Whop Treasury offers users up to 6% APY on USDT0 balances [7].
Traction
Reported figures include ~$80M monthly GMV in December 2024 approaching ~$100M monthly by March-April 2025, a company statement in April 2025 that it was set to process over $1B in payments annually, $2.67B cumulative GMV by February 2026 with gross transaction volume growing roughly 25% month over month, 18.4M+ users, 183,628 sellers, 258 sellers who had earned over $1M as of June 2025, ~$3B in annual creator payouts across 144 countries and average creator earnings of $8,413 per month. Whop's blog states the average business on the platform grows revenue 51% year over year. The Android app has 1M+ downloads and a 4.8 rating across roughly 130K reviews [3][5][7].
▸Full profile — market position, technology, go-to-market, geography, history, risks & controversies
Market position
Sacra classifies Whop within the consumer/creator-economy category as a marketplace and toolset for selling digital products such as courses, memberships and betting tips. Sacra estimated $142M annualized revenue in October 2025 (up from $56M at end-2024), 74% year-over-year growth in 2024, $2.67B cumulative lifetime GMV as of February 2026, 18.4M+ users and 183,628 sellers. One secondary funding blog characterized Whop as the only major consumer-focused marketplace for digital goods, though that claim is promotional and unverified elsewhere [6][7].
Whop bundles storefront creation, modular apps, community tools, payments, payouts, tax automation, card issuing, compliance and customer acquisition into one platform, versus creators assembling multiple separate tools. Its built-in Discover marketplace supplies demand and discovery to sellers, and its payments layer is offered both natively and as a standalone network to outside businesses [3][7].
Technology
Whop provides embeddable components and APIs, including an npm-distributed @whop/checkout React package (WhopCheckoutEmbed) plus wallet and chat embeds, so developers avoid building checkout infrastructure themselves. Its payments stack evolved from a Stripe Connect wrapper into proprietary systems with multi-PSP smart routing supporting 100+ payment methods across 195+ countries, 241+ territories and 135+ currencies, with local acquiring in the US, EU, Canada, Australia and the UK; orchestration is claimed to recover 6-10% more revenue from declined payments. Payments are supported via cards (Stripe), PayPal and cryptocurrency (Coinbase Commerce), with BNPL through up to 10 financing partners for U.S. customers (limits up to $42,750, terms up to five years). Tether wallet infrastructure is being embedded following the 2026 investment. The consumer app adds livestreaming, Whop AI support, and Google/Discord sign-in with two-factor authentication [0][5][7].
Go-to-market
Self-serve onboarding through the website and mobile app, where sellers pick a business model, industry, country and business name, create a product and configure a store page. Distribution is amplified by the built-in Discover marketplace (reported at over 4M unique monthly visitors), an affiliates program, a content/SEO blog, an app store ecosystem for third-party developers, and ad campaign management from the seller dashboard [3][4][5][7].
Digital entrepreneurs, creators, influencers and small businesses selling courses, coaching, memberships, communities, software subscriptions, services, events and trading or betting content; developers embedding checkout, wallet and chat components; and consumers who browse the Discover marketplace or earn through clipping and bounty programs [0][1][3][7].
Geography
Headquartered at the Domino Sugar Refinery in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York (300 Kent Ave Ste 401, Brooklyn, NY 11249), serving customers worldwide. Payments support 195+ countries, 241+ territories and 135+ currencies with local acquiring in the US, EU, Canada, Australia and the UK; creator payouts span 144 countries. The Tether investment is earmarked partly for expansion across LATAM, Europe and APAC [1][5][7].
History
Founded in Brooklyn in 2021, Whop raised a $17M Series A led by Insight Partners in July 2023 with participation from Peter Thiel, The Chainsmokers, Kevin O'Leary, Justin Mateen, Justin Kan and James Harden. In June 2024 it raised $50M in a Series B led by Bain Capital Ventures at an $800M valuation, and that year moved its headquarters to the redeveloped Domino Sugar Refinery in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, with roughly 30 employees at the time. It launched an App Store in September 2025. In February 2026, Tether invested $200M at a $1.6B valuation, a deal tied to embedding Tether wallet infrastructure and funding international expansion.
Risks & controversies
Google Play reviews describe technical errors, unsynced view counts, missing or delayed payout dates, account suspensions upon withdrawal and unresponsive support, along with complaints about transfer and tax fees; Whop responded that suspensions are never automatic, always evidence-based, and that appeals are reviewed. Whop also stated it no longer directly runs or manages the Content Rewards app, redirecting support to a separate team. Sacra notes the platform hosts controversial categories such as sports betting tips and crypto trading signals, and that eliminating the 30% marketplace fee sacrificed a high-margin revenue stream (marketplace sales were ~3% of GMV but ~20% of revenue in mid-2024) [5][7].
Compiled by commissioned research from 8 cited public sources — announcements, filings, and press listed under research sources below.
Key figures
latest reportedCompany-reported or press-reported figures, each dated to when it was claimed — not independently audited.
Founder mafia
3 people who came through Whop went on to found or lead other companies.
Competitors · 4
by search overlap
Companies competing with Whop for the same Google search keywords, organic and paid, via search-intersection analysis.
Timeline · 7
launches, deals, and filingsIn a Google Play developer response, Whop stated it no longer runs or manages the Content Rewards app directly; it hosts the app while a dedicated external support team handles Content Rewards issues.
Tether made a strategic investment of $200M. The partnership embeds Tether's wallet infrastructure into Whop and funds expansion across LATAM, Europe and APAC.
$200M source ↗
Following Tether's strategic investment, Tether's wallet infrastructure is being embedded into Whop's payments platform.
Whop opened an App Store where creators install modular apps into their whops and third-party developers can build and list apps.
$50M source ↗
Whop relocated its offices to the redeveloped former sugar refinery; the company had roughly 30 employees at the time.
Whop raised a Series A round led by Insight Partners with participation from Peter Thiel, The Chainsmokers, Kevin O'Leary, Justin Mateen, Justin Kan and James Harden. One secondary source reports the round as $18M and states the team expanded to 40 employees at the time.
$17M source ↗
Dated company events from announcements, filings, and press; legal rows summarize public dockets and regulator releases.
In the news
▸Research sources · 8
primary sources listed
- Whopwhop.com · web
8 public sources were cited for this profile; the first-party ones are listed here.
Frequently asked questions
- What does Whop do?
- Whop is a Brooklyn-based social commerce marketplace and toolset for selling digital products, memberships and communities.
- Who founded Whop?
- Whop was founded by Steven Schwartz, Jack Sharkey, Cameron Zoub in 2021.
- Who are Whop's investors?
- Whop's investors include A*, Bain Capital Ventures, Mantis Capital, Motley Fool Ventures, Insight Partners, Tether.
- How much funding has Whop raised?
- Whop has disclosed $200M raised across 1 of its 6 known rounds.