Whatnot acquires Shaped to power real-time live shopping recommendations

Livestream shopping app Whatnot announced Wednesday that it has acquired Shaped, a machine learning company that specializes in real-time recommendation and search systems. The deal is meant to strengthen Whatnot’s discovery and personalization capabilities as the platform continues to expand across new product categories and millions of buyers.

According to the company, the acquisition helps Whatnot continue its investment in AI as it looks to solve one of live commerce’s biggest challenges: helping shoppers find the right products while inventory, auctions, and buyer demand change in real time. 

Unlike traditional e-commerce platforms, where product catalogs remain relatively stable, Whatnot’s marketplace is constantly evolving, and live auctions can end within minutes or last for hours.

“By combining Shaped’s technology with Whatnot’s existing systems, we can make recommendations faster, more responsive, and more personalized,” Emmanuel Fuentes, VP, Data and AI at Whatnot, told TechCrunch. “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 said the company has spent the last six years improving the speed of its recommendation engine, reducing recommendation 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 every week, 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.)

The acquisition comes as Whatnot experiences significant growth. Launched in 2019, the company recently revealed that sellers have surpassed one billion orders. Earlier this year, Whatnot raised $225 million in Series F funding, giving the company a valuation of more than $11 billion after adding 20 million buyers over the past year.

Whatnot has also significantly broadened its marketplace, launching more than 35 new categories last year—including art, golf, and vinyl—and more than 45 additional categories during the first half of 2025, with new subcategories continuing to roll out each month.

Additionally, the move comes as resale giants race to integrate AI throughout their platforms, such as eBay and Poshmark. 

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