Whatnot Acquires Shaped As AI Push Expands Across Live Selling

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  "detected_at": "2026-07-16T00:58:06+00:00",
  "company": {
    "name": "Whatnot",
    "domain": "whatnot.com"
  },
  "data": {
    "url": "https://www.valueaddedresource.net/whatnot-acquires-shaped/",
    "title": "Whatnot Acquires Shaped As AI Push Expands Across Live Selling - Value Added Resource",
    "excerpt": "Whatnot has acquired machine learning company Shaped as the livestream shopping platform looks to improve search, recommendations and personalization across its rapidly expanding marketplace. Shaped builds real-time ranking systems used by marketplaces and content companies to determine which products, sellers or other content should be shown to each user. Founder and CEO Tullie Murrell, a former Meta engineer, will join Whatnot with nearly a dozen engineers and researchers to form and lead a new applied AI research group. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Whatnot says the acquisition will initially focus on matching buyers with relevant live shows, sellers and products as inventory and activity change in real time. That's a particularly difficult problem for a marketplace where shows can last hours or end within minutes, products may be listed and sold almost instantly, and thousands of viewer interactions constantly reshape demand. Whatnot says its systems already process more than half a million hours of live video every week, along with millions of real-time interactions used to improve recommendations. Cross-category buying has increased 170% year over year, while Whatnot added more than 35 categories last year and another 45 during the first half of 2026. The Shaped acquisition comes as Whatnot is also trying to solve a basic limitation of live selling...",
    "summary": "Whatnot recently integrated with Shopify, allowing merchants to import products, variants, and inventory while syncing orders and stock across both platforms.",
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    "image_url": "https://storage.ghost.io/c/ed/30/ed30d72b-9e06-4849-b9ff-511f2907ce30/content/images/2026/07/whatnotshaped.jpg",
    "confidence": 0.9,
    "published_at": "2026-07-16T00:58:06Z",
    "article_sentence": "That work builds on Whatnot’s recent Shopify integration, which allows merchants to import products, variants and inventory while syncing orders and stock across both platforms as part of a broader effort to attract larger brands and merchants managing inventory across multiple sales channels.",
    "related_company_name": "Shopify",
    "related_company_domain": "shopify.com"
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  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
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