Whop is a platform where business operators create an internet business, sell through it, and get paid. Operators on it range from product leads at startups to teenagers starting a first business, and the storefronts cover software, courses, memberships, and narrow services such as invoicing tools for trucking companies. On October 21, 2026, Whop announced a $200 million Series D at a $5.1 billion valuation, led by Sequoia and Shopify Ventures. The round follows a $200 million strategic investment from Tether in February 2026 at a $1.6 billion valuation. New capital will go to global expansion and to research and development on payments and advertising. In the three months before the raise, Whop released tools for creating a business and then operating it through prompts and recommendations. Business Blueprints let a new operator launch a ready-to-sell business in a few clicks, and the company says more than 21,000 businesses have been created that way in six weeks. The Whop CLI, out since July, makes the API compatible with AI agents so an operator can run a business from prompts. Whop says the CLI and MCP connectors receive more than 350,000 calls a day from over 14,700 monthly active users. Economic Intelligence recommends a next move from transaction data, and businesses that use it give Whop an extra percentage of the revenue earned from those recommendations. About 25,000 operators generate $550 million a month on Whop, and the company says it has facilitated more than $7 billion in transactions for people in 185 countries. CEO Steven Schwartz founded Whop in 2021 with Cameron Zoub and Jack Sharkey. Schwartz and Zoub met as teenagers in a Facebook group for sneaker reselling and sold bots that bought limited-edition shoes before they sold out. Schwartz has said they first launched Whop as a better way to sell that niche desktop software, and that he and Zoub started building on Shopify when they were 13.