Liquid Death is Valued at $1.4 Billion in New Financing Round

March 15, 2024

A water brand with a pop­u­lar social media fol­low­ing is now a bil­lion-dol­lar com­pa­ny. Los Ange­les-based Liq­uid Death has raised new cap­i­tal that val­ues the start­up at $1.4 bil­lion, dou­ble its $700 mil­lion val­u­a­tion in 2022.

The busi­ness has seen its momen­tum con­tin­ue with new­er cat­e­gories such as iced tea and fla­vored waters, Chief Exec­u­tive Offi­cer Mike Ces­sario said in an inter­view.

Liq­uid Death raised $67 mil­lion in cap­i­tal from strate­gic investors such as dis­tri­b­u­tion part­ners, as well as from actor Josh Brolin, Nation­al Foot­ball League play­er DeAn­dre Hop­kins and Live Nation Enter­tain­ment Inc., which sells the prod­ucts at its con­cert venues. SuRo Cap­i­tal, Sci­ence Inc. and Gray’s Creek Cap­i­tal Part­ners also par­tic­i­pat­ed.

The fund­ing will go toward prod­uct devel­op­ment, includ­ing new fla­vors for its prod­uct lines. Liq­uid Death, which launched its iced tea last year, has already climbed to the top spot for bot­tled iced tea sales on Amazon.com, accord­ing to the company’s web­site.

Ces­sario said that the fla­vored waters have also gained sig­nif­i­cant ear­ly trac­tion and the group recent­ly intro­duced fla­vored drink­ing pow­ders under the Death Dust name.

The com­pa­ny attrib­ut­es much of its sales growth to its mar­ket­ing, count­ing 7.9 mil­lion fol­low­ers across Tik­Tok and Insta­gram.

“If you have a valu­able brand, it means that peo­ple have a rea­son to care about you beyond the small func­tion­al dif­fer­ence,” Ces­sario said.

He said the com­pa­ny ini­tial­ly was inspired by beer brands. “There’s no rea­son that only beer is allowed to look cool and do fun­ny things,” he said.

When it comes to a liq­uid­i­ty event, such as an ini­tial pub­lic offer­ing or a sale of the com­pa­ny, Ces­sario said, “We want option­al­i­ty.” At the moment, the com­pa­ny is “not focused on any spe­cif­ic out­come,” Ces­sario said.

Liq­uid Death is “laser focused on prof­itabil­i­ty and prof­itable growth,” he said.

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