Whatnot acquires Shaped to improve live shopping recommendations
15 reported
Livestream shopping app Whatnot announced Wednesday that it has acquired Shaped, a machine learning company specializing in real-time recommendation and search systems. The deal aims to strengthen Whatnot’s discovery and personalization capabilities as the platform expands across new product categories and millions of buyers. According to Whatnot, the acquisition supports its investment in AI to address the challenge of helping shoppers find products as inventory, auctions, and buyer demand change in real time. Unlike traditional e-commerce, Whatnot’s marketplace is constantly evolving, with live auctions ending within minutes or lasting hours. Emmanuel Fuentes, VP of Data and AI at Whatnot, stated that combining Shaped’s technology with Whatnot’s systems will make recommendations faster, more responsive, and more personalized. Fuentes noted that Whatnot has spent six years improving its recommendation engine, reducing latency from roughly a day to minutes, and expects Shaped’s technology to push recommendations closer to real time. The company reports processing over 500,000 hours of live video and millions of real-time interactions weekly to improve recommendations.
What’s reported
Whatnot acquired Shaped, a machine learning company specializing in real-time recommendation and search systems.
The acquisition is meant to strengthen Whatnot’s discovery and personalization capabilities.
Whatnot’s marketplace is constantly evolving, with live auctions ending within minutes or lasting hours.
Emmanuel Fuentes, VP of Data and AI at Whatnot, said the acquisition will make recommendations faster, more responsive, and more personalized.
Whatnot has spent six years improving its recommendation engine, reducing latency from roughly a day to minutes.
Whatnot’s systems process over 500,000 hours of live video and millions of real-time interactions every week.
Shaped’s technology combines customer data with large language models and machine learning for personalized search and discovery.
Shaped’s customer roster included Outdoorsy and QVC.
Shaped founder and CEO Tullie Murrell, along with nearly a dozen engineers and AI researchers, will join Whatnot.
Murrell will lead Whatnot’s newly formed Applied AI Research group.
Murrell worked at Meta before launching Shaped.
Whatnot launched in 2019 and sellers have surpassed one billion orders.
Whatnot raised $225 million in Series F funding earlier this year, with a valuation over $11 billion after adding 20 million buyers in the past year.
Whatnot launched over 35 new categories last year and over 45 additional categories in the first half of 2025.
The move comes as resale giants like eBay and Poshmark integrate AI throughout their platforms.
Key figures
Emmanuel Fuentes, VP of Data and AI at Whatnot
Tullie Murrell, Shaped founder and CEO
Sources: TechCrunch
