Key Points
- Drake's OVO apparel brand is in advanced talks to sell a 50 percent stake to a major brand licensing company.
- OVO generates more than $50 million in annual revenue across flagships in Toronto, New York, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and London.
- Applied Real Intelligence (A.R.I.) acquired a controlling majority interest via a secured term loan and convertible note earlier this year.
- The deal follows a wave of licensing firms acquiring fashion IP, including Authentic Brands Group's purchase of Guess.
Drake is getting ready to sell half of what he built. According to Puck News, the rapper's team is deep in negotiations to sell a 50 percent stake in OVO's apparel brand to a major licensing company. The identity of the buyer has not been publicly confirmed, but the deal would mark a significant shift in the ownership structure of one of hip-hop's most successful fashion ventures.
What OVO is worth
OVO — October's Very Own — started in 2008 as a blog and music collective and launched apparel around 2011. Co-founded by Drake, Oliver El-Khatib, and Noah "40" Shebib, the brand now generates more than $50 million in annual sales across flagship stores in Toronto, New York, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and London, with additional Canadian locations in Mississauga, Ottawa, Calgary, and British Columbia. The product line runs from $12 accessories to a $5,000 leather coat with 24-karat gold hardware, with most pieces priced between $45 and $168. OVO also holds licensing deals with the NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, MLS, Disney, PlayStation, Chelsea FC, WWE, and BAPE, plus a $10 million partnership with Nike's Jordan Brand signed in 2013 and a separate Nocta sub-label launched with Nike in 2020.
The financing runway
The sale talks follow a financing round announced in May 2026, when Applied Real Intelligence (A.R.I.) provided a senior secured term loan and led a convertible note financing that gave the firm a "controlling majority interest" and expanded governance role. That deal was specifically structured to provide growth capital "without forcing the founders to immediately dilute their equity stake" — language that suggests Drake's team was already mapping the path toward a larger transaction.
The licensing playbook
If the deal closes, OVO would join a growing list of hip-hop and fashion brands absorbed by the licensing industry's consolidation wave. Jay-Z sold Rocawear to Iconix Brand Group for $204 million in 2007 when the brand was doing $700 million in annual sales. Diddy sold roughly 80 percent of Sean John to Global Brands Group for an estimated $70 million — then bought it back for $7.55 million after GBG went bankrupt. Pharrell sold a 50 percent stake in Billionaire Boys Club to Iconix before eventually getting his share back. The cautionary tales are built into the playbook: licensing deals can extract maximum short-term value from a brand's IP, but they tend to hollow out the creative infrastructure that made the brand desirable in the first place.
The read
OVO is the rare hip-hop brand that cleared $50 million in revenue without becoming a commodity. The question is whether selling half to a licensing firm — the same model that stripped Rocawear to its bones and left Sean John in bankruptcy court — can preserve what makes it work. Drake retaining 50 percent and a creative role is a different structure than what Jay-Z or Diddy accepted, but the economics of brand licensing pull hard toward volume, sub-licensing, and category extension. The deal values what OVO has already built. Whether it protects what OVO could still become is the bet Drake is making.
The same ownership logic keeps spreading across hip-hop's business layer, from label revivals to Megan Thee Stallion launching her Hot Girl Summer fragrance with Coty. It showed up again in July, when Young Thug bought a $5 million Cooper City, Florida mansion in cash through a trust tied to an LLC he manages with his own representative, Geoff Ogunlesi.
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