Ethnic E-Grocer Weee! Raises $425M in E Round Financing

Funds will expand delivery across ethnicities and geographies; accelerate AI innovation

2/28/2022

Since its founding in 2015, Weee! has received $800 million-plus in funding.

Ethnic online grocer Weee! has secured $425 million in Series E financing led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2. Greyhound Capital also took part in the round alongside the company’s existing investors. The capital will be used to expand Weee!’s platform to new and existing ethnicities, and scale grocery and food delivery services to new geographies. The company will also beef up its warehouse automation and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies.

“The market for ethnic groceries and food is massively underserved in the U.S., and we believe that Weee! is in a prime position to meet the demands of customers,” noted Lydia Jett, managing partner at Softbank Investment Advisers, whose main offices are in London; San Carlos, Calif.; and Tokyo. “Weee!’s strong execution capabilities and reach across multiple ethnic groups, coupled with a unique customer experience model leveraging AI, has enabled it to scale effectively in a rapidly evolving grocery market. We are delighted to partner with [Weee! founder and CEO] Larry Liu and the team to support their next phase of expansion.” Jett will join Weee!’s board of directors as part of the Series E funding.

“We’ve seen tremendous growth in 2021, even through the easing of COVID-19-related pressures, as our customers continue to discover affordable access to a wide array of exciting products and food online.” said Liu. “We look forward to building on that momentum as we add depth to our investor base with Softbank’s global e-commerce expertise, and welcome them to the board. Their partnership will further enable Weee! to serve customers in the $360-plus billion ethnic grocery and food market.”

Fremont, Calif.-based Weee! continues to grow its Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Filipino, Indian and Latin offerings for customers, adding more than 500 new products per week, and plans to expand to other ethnicities in the future. Weee! also teams with 1,000-plus restaurants to offer customers authentic food-at-home options. The company currently delivers more than 10,000 locally sourced and hard-to-find goods from around the world directly to customers, at affordable prices.

Since its founding in 2015, Weee! has received $800 million-plus in funding from Arena Holdings, Blackstone, DST Global, Goodwater Capital, Greyhound Capital, iFly.vc, Lightspeed Ventures, SoftBank Vision Fund II, Tiger Global, VMG and XVC.

The company has recently gone on something of a hiring spree, bringing aboard “Crazy Rich Asians” and “In the Heights” filmmaker Jon M. Chu as chief creative officer; Rudy Darmawan as its first VP of engineering; Amanda Oren as VP, merchandising services and planning; Judy Phyo as VP, corporate controller; and Nitin Jain as VP, financial planning and analysis.