Whatnot, a livestream shopping app, acquired Shaped, a machine-learning startup focused on real-time recommendation and search, for undisclosed terms, aiming to sharpen product discovery and personalization as it adds categories, according to TechCrunch. Shaped pairs a company’s own data with large language models to power personalized search and discovery, with clients like Outdoorsy and QVC. Founder and CEO Tullie Murrell, a former Meta engineer, will join Whatnot with nearly a dozen staff to lead a new Applied AI Research group. Whatnot, launched in 2019, has grown fast, adding dozens of new categories and racing rivals like eBay and Poshmark to weave AI across live and resale commerce.
