Camille van Horne still remembers the warehouse visits during her years at Instacart, walking past pallets of perfectly good products destined for destruction. Beauty products with 17 months of shelf life. Household goods rejected by retail buyers for minor packaging changes. All headed to landfills because the traditional liquidation channels couldn't move them fast enough—or discreetly enough.
That memory became the kernel of Highstock, the B2B marketplace she co-founded with fellow Instacart alum Sean Cashin to help consumer brands quietly offload excess inventory. In September, the New York startup announced it had raised $30 million in a Series A round led by Andreessen Horowitz, with Greylock participating. The funding comes as Highstock has now listed more than $1 billion worth of unsold products on its platform and diverted over 10 million pounds from landfills.
It's a problem bigger than most consumers realize. Brands routinely manufacture surplus or face unexpected retailer rejections, leaving them with warehouses full of goods they can't sell through normal channels. Traditional liquidation often means steep discounts that damage brand value or murky distribution networks where products resurface in unauthorized markets. Highstock promises a different path: AI-powered matching with vetted wholesale buyers, complete logistics handling, and crucially, discretion.
The approach seems to be resonating with larger players. According to Andreessen Horowitz, roughly 60% of Highstock's transaction volume now comes from brands and conglomerates pulling in over $500 million annually. Beauty brands like Laura Geller, Bliss and Versed have used the platform, WWD reported, while buyers range from live commerce operators to international e-commerce platforms. One Whatnot seller called The Boyzzz, with some 170,000 followers and 145,000-plus sales, sources inventory through Highstock. International buyers represent 40% of the business.
Van Horne, who served as director of product management at Instacart, built the initial version alongside Cashin, who handled engineering at the grocery delivery giant. They focused first on beauty and personal care, categories where shelf life creates urgent liquidation needs. Products with less than 18 months remaining often get rejected by traditional retailers, van Horne noted, even when they're perfectly usable. Highstock's software handles the compliance paperwork, payment processing and logistics that typically slow liquidation deals.
The company employs about 15 people and works with more than 100 brands and a similar number of business buyers, according to a16z's jobs newsletter. With the Series A in hand, Highstock is pushing into apparel. "We've been very successful in beauty and personal care," van Horne told WWD. "Apparel is five times the size of the beauty liquidation market." The company plans to hire across operations, partnerships and growth, with open roles including head of operations, strategic partner manager and growth lead for new verticals.
Andreessen Horowitz partner Olivia Moore is joining Highstock's board, with Jeff Jordan participating as an advisor. The firm led this round after Greylock backed Highstock's earlier seed funding. Angels in that seed round included Instacart co-founder Max Mullen, Lenny Rachitsky, JJ Zhuang and John Adams.
The liquidation space has attracted attention from multiple angles. B-Stock operates auction networks for excess and returned inventory from retailers including Walmart and Target. Liquidity Services trades publicly. Ghost, another B2B inventory marketplace, raised $30 million in a Series B in August 2023. What differentiates Highstock, its backers argue, is the combination of AI matching and brand safety built into the platform from inception.
"We believe the winner will be the platform that is AI-native and brand-safe from day one," Andreessen Horowitz partners Olivia Moore and Justine Moore wrote Tuesday. Whether that thesis holds may depend on how well Highstock can maintain discretion and quality control as it scales beyond beauty into larger, more complex categories like apparel. For now, though, the company has managed to turn van Horne's warehouse observations into a business that's keeping millions of pounds of product in circulation rather than decomposing in dumps.
