David Beckham's startup IM8 has raised $1 billion in funding from General Catalyst's Customer Value Fund (CVF), the company announced Tuesday.
CVF does not make standard venture equity investments, but essentially provides loans with non-traditional repayment terms. Start-ups that receive funding from the CVF repay the loan amount using a capped percentage of their revenue.
Therefore, GC will not purchase any shares and will have no ownership interest in IM8. Likewise, the ownership of the startup will not be diluted. As GC previously told TechCrunch, this is an option for startups with a predictable revenue stream and plans to fuel growth with more capital.
IM8 was co-founded by CEO Danny Yong, a self-proclaimed high school dropout. He founded a health company called Prenetics, which went public in 2022. From there, he moved into circles that included having dinner with David Beckham. The dinner led to IM8, a subsidiary owned by Prenetics, which sells vitamin drinks packed with compounds associated with longevity, from acai fruit extract to coenzyme Q10. Customers purchase drinks through subscriptions.
The loan is structured to finance up to 70% of IM8's customer acquisition costs, and in return GC will receive a capped share of what it calls “reference revenue.” This is defined as the revenue generated from those customers “multiplied by a fixed gross profit assumption.” Once GC recovers its investment and reaches its revenue share cap, all subsequent revenue from those customers will go to Prenetics.
As previously reported, Grammarly also received $1 billion from GC's CVF in May 2025, just before acquiring Superhuman.