Business

Whatnot Acquires Shaped to Enhance Real-Time Live Shopping Recommendations

Whatnot acquired Shaped, a machine learning firm, to improve real-time recommendation systems for its livestream shopping platform, according to a July 15, 2026, announcement.

Image: TechCrunch

Whatnot, a livestream shopping app, announced on Wednesday that it has acquired Shaped, a machine learning company focused on real-time recommendation and search systems. The acquisition aims to strengthen Whatnot’s discovery and personalization features as the platform expands into new product categories and caters to millions of buyers. According to the company, the move supports its investment in AI to address a key challenge in live commerce: helping shoppers find products amid rapidly changing inventory, auctions, and demand. Whatnot’s marketplace differs from traditional e-commerce platforms, where product catalogs are stable, by being in constant flux, with live auctions ending in minutes or lasting hours. 'By combining Shaped’s technology with Whatnot’s existing systems, we can make recommendations faster, more responsive, and more personalized,' said Emmanuel Fuentes, VP of Data and AI at Whatnot. 'That speed matters because live commerce is a uniquely hard recommendation problem. Inventory changes by the second, shows start and end continuously, and buyer intent shifts throughout a show.' Fuentes added that the company has spent the last six years improving its recommendation engine, reducing latency from roughly a day to just minutes. Integrating Shaped’s technology is expected to push those recommendations even closer to real time. The company says its systems process more than 500,000 hours of live video and millions of real-time interactions weekly, using that data to continuously improve recommendations. Founded to help businesses build AI-powered recommendation systems, Shaped developed technology that combines existing customer data with large language models and machine learning to deliver highly personalized search and discovery experiences. Its customer roster included companies such as Outdoorsy and QVC. As part of the acquisition, Shaped founder and CEO Tullie Murrell, along with nearly a dozen engineers and AI researchers, will join Whatnot. Murrell will lead the company’s newly formed Applied AI Research group. (Notably, Murrell worked at Meta before launching Shaped.)

Source: techcrunch

Key points

Whatnot acquired Shaped to enhance real-time recommendation systems for its livestream shopping platform.
The acquisition strengthens Whatnot’s discovery and personalization capabilities as it expands into new product categories and serves millions of buyers.
Whatnot’s marketplace differs from traditional e-commerce platforms by being in constant flux, with live auctions ending in minutes or lasting hours.
Whatnot reduced recommendation latency from roughly a day to just minutes over the past six years.
Whatnot’s systems process more than 500,000 hours of live video and millions of real-time interactions weekly.
Shaped’s technology combines existing customer data with large language models and machine learning to deliver personalized search and discovery experiences.
Shaped’s customer roster included companies such as Outdoorsy and QVC.

Source: TechCrunch Read the original →

WRITTEN BY

Marcus Feld

AI Business & Markets

Marcus reports on AI funding, acquisitions, partnerships, and the business behind the technology.