AI Powers Whatnot's Live Commerce Revolution

Whatnot, a livestream shopping platform, announced its acquisition of Shaped, a machine learning company specializing in real-time recommendation and search systems. This move is designed to significantly improve Whatnot's personalization and discovery features as it expands its reach to millions of buyers across various product categories. The integration aims to address the complexities of live commerce, where rapidly changing inventory and demand make finding the right products a major hurdle.

By merging Shaped's technology with its existing infrastructure, Whatnot expects to deliver faster, more responsive, and highly personalized recommendations. Emmanuel Fuentes, VP of Data and AI at Whatnot, highlighted that real-time recommendations are crucial in live commerce due to the second-by-second changes in inventory and buyer intent. The company processes extensive data weekly to refine these recommendations.

Shaped, founded to help businesses build AI-powered recommendation systems, brings expertise in combining customer data with large language models and machine learning. Tullie Murrell, Shaped's founder and CEO, along with nearly a dozen engineers, will join Whatnot. Murrell will head the newly established Applied AI Research group. This acquisition occurs as Whatnot experiences substantial growth, having surpassed one billion orders and recently secured $225 million in funding, valuing the company at over $11 billion.

Whatnot has aggressively expanded its marketplace by launching over 35 new categories last year and more than 45 in the first half of 2025, with new subcategories continuously rolling out. This strategic investment in AI aligns with broader industry trends, as other resale giants like eBay and Poshmark also integrate AI into their platforms.