Whatnot announced on Wednesday it has acquired Shaped, a machine learning firm focused on real-time recommendation and search systems. The purchase aims to boost discovery and personalisation as the platform expands into new product categories and serves millions of buyers.
The deal addresses a core difficulty in live commerce: helping shoppers locate specific items while inventory levels, auction timings, and buyer demand shift constantly.
Traditional e-commerce sites rely on relatively stable product catalogs. Whatnot’s marketplace operates differently, with live auctions that can conclude in minutes or extend for hours.
“By combining Shaped’s technology with Whatnot’s existing systems, we can make recommendations faster, more responsive, and more personalised,” Emmanuel Fuentes, VP of 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 noted the company has spent six years improving the speed of its recommendation engine, cutting latency from roughly a day to just minutes. Integrating Shaped’s technology should push those recommendations even closer to real time. The company’s systems process more than 500,000 hours of live video and millions of real-time interactions every week, using that data to continuously refine suggestions.
Shaped was founded to help businesses build AI-powered recommendation systems. Its technology combines existing customer data with large language models and machine learning to deliver highly personalised search and discovery experiences. Previous clients included 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. Murrell previously worked at Meta before launching Shaped.
The acquisition arrives 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.
What it means
For the people using the app, the change means recommendations will update almost instantly as a live show progresses. A buyer watching an auction for a specific guitar will see suggestions that reflect the current stock and the specific interests of other viewers in that room, rather than relying on data that is days old.
