Brief: Ethnic e-grocer Weee! grabs $425m in Softbank-led Series E

• US ethnic e-grocer Weee! has closed a $425 million Series E round of funding led by Softbank Vision Fund 2. Greyhound Capital also joined the round alongside existing investors.
• Weee! will use the funding to expand its platform to serve more communities and new geographies – and to advance its warehouse automation and AI technologies.
• It claims to be a leader in the “underserved” ethnic e-grocer space, and its service is already available in several US states.

Why it matters:

Founded in 2015, Fremont, California-based Weee! became profitable for the first time in 2020. This week’s Series E round comes a year after the company closed a $316 Series D raise and brings the startup’s total funding to date to over $800 million.

Weee! says it now delivers more than 10,000 “hard-to-find” products, including Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, Indian, Korean, and Vietnamese items.In addition to food it sells household and beauty items – and it has partnered with more than 1,000 restaurants to deliver meals to customers, too.

In a statement, Lydia Jett, managing partner at Softbank Investment Advisors, said that 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.”

The size of the round speaks to the continuing investor interest in the e-grocery sector, which raked in over $8 billion in funding dollars in H1 2021.