Another celebrity buys another brand
Another celebrity signs a deal. This time it is Kendall Jenner. The company is called Trip. It is a small London firm that puts CBD into canned drinks, part of a new wave of wellness products aimed at people looking for an alternative to alcohol. This is not a surprise. Other famous names, including Joe Jonas and Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, have already publicly backed the brand. Jenner's investment, announced on 8 September 2026, is different. It is bigger.
She is not just the new face of Trip. This is not a simple advertising campaign. Kendall Jenner has bought a piece of the business. She is now a part owner, having acquired an equity stake in the firm for an undisclosed sum. Her money is now tied up in the future of a British startup. This arrangement fundamentally changes the nature of the relationship from a straightforward transaction, where a model is paid a fee for her time and image, into a complex partnership where her own financial success is directly linked to the company’s growth. This is a calculated financial decision. It is a very serious one.
This structure transforms the celebrity from a hired marketing asset into a genuine business partner whose incentives are perfectly aligned with the other shareholders. It is a world away from the old model of paying a famous person £1 million for ten Instagram posts and a photoshoot in a studio. The modern deal involves the celebrity using their own capital to buy shares, sometimes at a preferential price, turning them into an investor who is motivated to build long term value, open doors with giant retailers, and help guide the strategy. What does a deal like this really involve? Why would a company give away a piece of itself? Why would a celebrity want it? The answers are about money. Big money.
The deal poses a fundamental question about how new products are built and sold in the twenty first century. The line between celebrity, influencer, marketer and venture capitalist has completely dissolved. Kendall Jenner is not just lending her famous face to Trip. She is becoming an integral part of its financial machinery, betting that her involvement can help propel a fast growing British drinks company into a global brand worth hundreds of millions of pounds. Her role is no longer just to look good in a picture holding the product. Her job now is to make herself, and her fellow investors, rich.
What is Trip?
Trip is a London company. It sells drinks. The drinks are infused with cannabidiol, or CBD, a legal, non psychoactive compound derived from the cannabis plant. Sources describe Trip as one of the United Kingdom’s fastest growing food and drink firms, a position it has achieved by tapping into a deep and accelerating cultural change in what people want from a beverage. The company is not selling simple refreshment. It is selling an experience. It is selling calm.
The market for products containing CBD has moved from the periphery to the mainstream with astonishing speed. Ten years ago, CBD was an obscure substance sold in specialist health shops. It is now a fixture on the high street. This explosive growth is not about people seeking a legal high, because CBD does not provide one, but is instead about a huge group of consumers searching for new ways to manage the pressures of modern life. They are looking for something to help them unwind. They want an alternative to alcohol.
This consumer demand created a new battleground in the drinks industry. The market for sophisticated, adult soft drinks is now a highly competitive space where companies vie to offer functional benefits that go far beyond taste. Consumers are willing to pay a premium for a drink that promises to improve their focus, enhance their mood or, in the case of Trip, offer a moment of tranquility in a can. Trip’s success is built on meeting this specific need with a well designed product that looks and feels like a premium item, not a medicinal supplement. It has found its place.
The company was already a known quantity in investment circles and among its target audience. Kendall Jenner is not the first famous name to invest. She follows the singer Joe Jonas and the model Rosie Huntington-Whiteley in buying a stake, adding her considerable influence to an already well backed enterprise. The firm, founded in London, has successfully positioned its cans of sparkling CBD water as the acceptable face of cannabis wellness, creating a brand that major retailers feel comfortable putting on their shelves and that celebrities are eager to be associated with.
This is not an advertising campaign
This is not an advert. It is a purchase. Kendall Jenner has not been paid a one off fee to hold a pastel coloured can. She has bought a piece of the company. This deal is different. It aligns her financial future with the success of the brand in a way that a simple advertising contract never could. It makes her a part owner.
Equity is simply a word for ownership. It means Jenner now possesses a fraction of Trip, a stake in its future fortunes. If the London firm is eventually sold for a vast sum, she receives her percentage of the proceeds. If the company fails, her shares become worthless. A standard endorsement deal has no such risk and no such reward. A celebrity is paid a flat fee, perhaps £500,000 for a few social media posts, and the transaction ends there. Their financial interest is finished. Jenner’s is just beginning. Every can of Trip that sells, every new supermarket that agrees to stock the drink, every positive review makes her personal stake in the business more valuable. She is not just a spokesperson. She is an investor.
These celebrity investors rarely pay the full cash price for their shares. A company like Trip might be valued by its backers at £50 million. A one per cent stake would therefore cost £500,000 in a normal funding round. But a person like Kendall Jenner provides something much more valuable than money. She offers a direct line to hundreds of millions of potential customers. This is sometimes called ‘sweat equity’. The business is effectively trading a slice of its future profits for a marketing opportunity so vast it could never afford to buy it. Her involvement becomes a form of capital. It is a powerful asset.
The ultimate aim is to emulate the biggest successes in this field. It is a specific strategy. The playbook was written by people like George Clooney. He cofounded a tequila brand, Casamigos, which the drinks multinational Diageo bought in 2017 for a price of up to one billion US dollars. That single deal transformed a celebrity hobby into a historic financial return and created a template for others to follow. The goal is ownership, not employment. This is the new model for celebrity wealth creation, turning fame itself into the foundation of a business empire.
From famous face to venture capitalist
The motivation is money. Not just fee-for-service income, but generational wealth. An endorsement deal pays the bills. An equity stake can build a dynasty. A celebrity like Kendall Jenner can command a fee of hundreds of thousands of pounds for a single marketing campaign, but that is transactional income which stops the moment the contract ends. Owning a piece of the company transforms a one off payment into a long term asset, one that has the potential to grow in value by orders of magnitude if the business succeeds. This is wealth generation. It is not just income. This is a calculated shift from being a paid performer to a business owner.
The strategy has a clear precedent. It has a playbook. Consider George Clooney. He and his partners founded the Casamigos tequila brand, which was later acquired by the British drinks giant Diageo in 2017 for a staggering sum that could reach one billion US dollars. That deal changed everything. It provided a stunningly clear demonstration that a well timed investment in a consumer brand, amplified by a famous face, could yield a return hundreds of times greater than a lifetime of standard endorsement contracts. Ryan Reynolds repeated the trick. His Aviation American Gin was also sold to Diageo, in a 2020 deal worth up to 610 million US dollars. These are not small sums.
They are transformative financial events. An actor might make fifty million pounds from a blockbuster film, but a billion dollar exit for a company they partly own operates on a completely different financial scale, creating a fortune that is almost impossible to earn through salary alone. Fame becomes capital. Reputation becomes a tangible asset on a balance sheet. This approach redefines the celebrity's role from a hired face on a billboard to a strategic partner, a venture capitalist whose primary investment is their own immense public profile. The goal is no longer just to sell the product. The goal is to sell the company. It is a smarter game.
The multi million pound Instagram post
The calculation for Trip is brutally simple. It is about reach. This is a transaction measured in eyeballs and attention, two of the most valuable commodities in the modern economy. A company can spend years, and millions of pounds, painstakingly building a brand from a stall in Borough Market to a recognisable name on a supermarket shelf. Or it can partner with Kendall Jenner. Bringing her on board as an owner gives the London firm access to a marketing channel more powerful than almost any conventional advertising campaign it could possibly afford, delivering a global audience in an instant. Buying that kind of exposure through targeted digital ads, television spots, and billboard posters would cost tens of millions of pounds. It is a budget far beyond the reach of a fast growing but still developing British drinks company.
Her involvement is also a signal. A very loud one. When a company like Trip wants to get its cans into a major retailer like Tesco or Sainsbury’s, it is entering an incredibly fierce competition for limited shelf space. The buyers for these supermarkets see thousands of new products. They hear hundreds of pitches. Jenner’s name, attached not as a hired model but as a part owner and strategic partner, changes the conversation entirely, elevating Trip above the noise. It tells the entire supply chain, from distributors to shop owners, that this is a serious venture with immense commercial power behind it. Other investors notice too. While Trip already had high profile backers, including the musician Joe Jonas and the model Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Jenner’s involvement operates on a different scale of fame and influence.
This is about acceleration. Everything happens faster. Product development cycles that take years can be compressed into months because the route to market is suddenly clear and wide open. A planned five year expansion into the United States could happen in eighteen months. The slow, grinding work of building brand awareness is replaced by a single, explosive event. A celebrity of Jenner's status posting a picture with a can of Trip on her Instagram account generates more immediate interest than a hundred positive reviews in trade publications. It allows a young company to leapfrog its rivals. It is a shortcut to global recognition.
The value is almost difficult to comprehend. Fame is the asset. Consider the cost of a thirty second television advert during the final of the Brit Awards, which might reach an audience of four million people and cost hundreds of thousands of pounds. A single social media post by Jenner can be seen by a hundred times that number of people within hours, with an implied endorsement that a traditional advert can never replicate. The company does not pay her a fee for this. It pays her in shares. The cost is a slice of the future, not a withdrawal from the bank. It is a smarter way to buy fame. It aligns everyone on the same goal. Make the company a success.
What is the endgame for Trip?
The final move is a sale. This is the endgame. Celebrity investments are not long term holdings designed to generate a steady income through dividends; they are rocket fuel for a three to five year journey towards a lucrative exit. Founders and early investors, including the celebrity partners themselves, realise their profit when the company is sold for an enormous multiple of its initial valuation to a corporate giant that has been watching from the sidelines. Kendall Jenner is not just buying a stake in a drink. She is buying a lottery ticket that her own fame can turn into a winner. The goal is to get bought.
The buyers are waiting. A drinks behemoth like Diageo, PepsiCo, or Unilever has enormous global distribution and billions in revenue but can be too slow and bureaucratic to create an authentic new brand from scratch. It is faster, cheaper, and safer for them to acquire a proven success story that has already captured a loyal following in a high growth sector like wellness drinks. They are not just buying a recipe and a factory. They are buying market share, cultural relevance and a pre built marketing machine. Trip is the perfect target. The company offers a direct route into the booming market for alcohol alternatives and functional beverages, a sector that the big players have struggled to penetrate. They are too slow. They need to buy speed.
This alliance is also a liability. Tying a brand's identity so tightly to a single individual creates a significant and unpredictable risk that a potential buyer must consider very carefully. The celebrity who provides the initial momentum becomes a single point of failure. A personal scandal, a poorly judged public statement, or even a simple decline in popularity can directly damage sales and erode the brand’s value overnight. A buyer will factor this vulnerability into any offer, potentially demanding contractual protections or simply reducing the price to reflect the danger that the biggest asset could become toxic. One mistake can be fatal. Reputation is fragile. The value can vanish.
So the signs are clear. Watch the United States. A major American launch would be the most logical next step, leveraging Jenner’s home turf and the world's most valuable consumer market to prove the brand has global appeal. A successful entry there would dramatically increase Trip’s potential sale price. The other signal to watch for is a formal funding round, perhaps a Series B, which would bring in more professional investors, further raise the company's profile, and force it to organise its finances for the intense scrutiny of a corporate acquisition. This is not just about raising more cash. It is about preparing the company for its final, most profitable act. The sale.
Sources. Independent Business: Kendall Jenner buys stake in British CBD drinks firm Trip and fronts global campaign. Evening Standard: Kendall Jenner buys stake in London drinks brand Trip.
Analysis. Drafted with AI assistance from the sources listed above and reviewed by an editor before publication. Jnews links to the organisations it writes about.
