From a Phoenix Garage to Nearly $20 Billion: Whatnot’s Arizona Origin Story

By Kyle Macdonald, COO, Silicon Oasis

One of the most valuable technology startups in the country has an origin story that starts in a Phoenix garage.

Whatnot, the live-shopping marketplace founded by Grant LaFontaine and Logan Head in 2019, has raised another $545 million in fresh capital, pushing its valuation to nearly $20 billion.

Today, Whatnot is headquartered in California and has grown into a major live-commerce platform. But its beginnings trace back to Arizona, where LaFontaine and Head started the company in a Phoenix garage.

That's a story Arizona should be talking about.

It's easy to measure the growth of Arizona's technology economy by looking at the companies relocating here, the semiconductor fabs being constructed or the billions of dollars being invested in new infrastructure.

Those things matter. But there's another measure that matters just as much: Can globally significant companies actually start here?

Whatnot provides a pretty compelling answer.

The company has moved far beyond its early focus on collectibles, building a marketplace around livestreamed buying and selling. Its latest funding comes less than a year after Whatnot raised $225 million at an $11.5 billion valuation in October 2025.

Now it's approaching $20 billion.

For Arizona's startup community, there is a bigger lesson here.

We need to get better at identifying, celebrating and staying connected to the founders who start their journeys in Arizona—even when their companies eventually establish headquarters or major operations somewhere else.

Success stories create more success stories. Founders become investors. Employees become founders. Capital gets recycled. Networks get stronger. And the next entrepreneur realizes that building something enormous from Arizona isn't hypothetical. Someone has already done it.

At Silicon Oasis, our mission isn't simply to attract technology companies to Arizona. It's to help create an ecosystem capable of producing them.

Whatnot started in a Phoenix garage.

Seven years later, it's worth nearly $20 billion.

That's an Arizona technology story worth telling.