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Retired soccer freekick ace David Beckham seems to be ubiquitous pitchman during World Cup broadcasts, bending viewers’ ears with roles in ads for Home Depot, McDonald’s, Bank of America, Lays, Stella Artois and Adidas, to tune of $25-30 mil payday by some estimates. Bend it like Beckham, indeed. Behind scenes, tho, IM8 supplement brand he’s codeveloped with Prenetics has laid groundwork for him to make an even bigger bundle, raising $1 bil in growth financing for fast-igniting brand via relatively unusual vehicle that avoids shareholder dilution. The money came in via General Catalyst's Customer Value Fund, which will finance up to 70% of IM8's marketing spend, in return receiving a capped share of income tied to performance of customer cohorts financed thru program, per announcement. “Once General Catalyst has recovered its investment and capped return on any given monthly cohort, all subsequent value from those customers accrues entirely and permanently to IM8. The arrangement does not involve the issuance of any equity, warrants or convertible instruments to General Catalyst, and is tracked separately for each monthly cohort of customers.” Vehicle thus offers “no-dilution, risk-aligned, cohort-matched capital that is purpose-built to finance customer acquisition and is repaid only from the revenue those customers generate” so that Prenetics can use its cash reserves for other functions like product innovation, clinical research and strategic opportunities. By contrast, the funds raised via the CVF will be used for directly revenue-generating sales and marketing activities like digital marketing, offline and connected-TV media, ambassador and athlete partnerships, brand activations and sponsorships, content production and retention marketing, Prenetics says.How risky is this setup? Not very, co reassures. “Every IM8 customer cohort since launch has exceeded the contractual performance thresholds defined in the arrangement,” it informed. As Prenetics CEO Danny Yeung noted, to date, every dollar co has spent acquiring IM8 customers has already returned $1.44 in gross profit, a figure that’s rising as more shoppers sign up as subscribers.Does this rep a new direction in growth financing? Angel investor and newsletter writer Guillermo Flor describes it as a twist on traditional structured loans that replicates the $1 bil CVF deal that AI writing assistant Grammarly did in May 2025. So, “this is becoming a playbook. A billion dollars of growth capital with zero ownership transfer is a very different kind of leverage. Is this the future of scaling consumer subscription businesses?”As we’ve reported, IM8 is lookin’ to be one of fastest-scaling supplements, currently at annual run rate of $200 mil less than 2 yrs after its launch in Dec 2024. That run rate is based on record Jun sales of $17 mil. The growth to date has been built on sales of just 2 flagship powdered entries, Daily Ultimate Essentials and Daily Ultimate Longevity, with wave of innovation anticipated to commence starting this fall that will including IM8 Hydration in Q4 and gummies line in early 2027. Will RTDs enter mix? Co hasn’t ruled that out at right time, but so far is focused on other formats. The continued acceleration prompted Prenetics to raise its full-yr guidance for 2d time this yr, from $190-210 mil to revised target of $210-220 mil. By now, co has hived off all its other major operations, including Europa gym-channel distribution arm and crypto activities, so that Prenetics itself is entirely a bet on IM8’s future success. Besides Beckham, brand has enlisted roster of investor/influencers that includes athletes Giannis Antetokounmpo, Aryna Sabalenka and Ollie Bearman, health influencer Jay Shetty and Inter Miami MLS team.

Prenetics Taps Non-Dilutive Funding from General Catalyst to Raise $1B to Build Beckham’s IM8 Supplement Brand

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