Tilt’s $26M raise, the first Vinted Ventures cheque into a live-commerce platform, looks like a defensive move against the Whatnot expansion threatening Vinted’s European resale base.
Tilt, the London-based live-auction app founded by two early Revolut employees, has raised $26m in fresh funding with Vinted Ventures joining as a new investor alongside existing backers TQ Ventures, Balderton Capital, Earlybird and Seedcamp.
The raise brings the company’s total funding to over $50m and lands at a moment when the European live-commerce category has shifted from theoretical opportunity to active competitive battleground.
The Vinted Ventures participation is the part worth pausing on. The corporate venture arm of Europe’s largest second-hand marketplace is, on the company’s own framing, looking to back “the next generation of re-commerce.”
Whatnot reached an $11.5bn valuation last year on $6bn in gross merchandise value and 541% download growth. AlixPartners’s own analysis of the resale market identifies Whatnot as a direct threat to Vinted’s asynchronous-listing model. Backing Tilt is the most concrete signal yet that Vinted is choosing to compete in the live-commerce category rather than cede it.The 💜 of EU techThe latest rumblings from the EU tech scene, a story from our wise ol' founder Boris, and some questionable AI art. It's free, every week, in your inbox. Sign up now!
