Pinterest CEO Bill Ready recently emphasized the effectiveness of open source AI models during the company’s earnings call, pointing to their potential for cost savings as Pinterest seeks to enhance its visual AI capabilities. As a platform that plays a pivotal role in many consumers’ shopping journeys, Pinterest employs AI technology in features such as personalized recommendations, multimodal search that integrates text and images, ad targeting, and its new AI-powered Pinterest Assistant designed for product discovery.
Amid inquiries from investors about Pinterest’s prospects in agentic commerce—AI systems that can autonomously act on behalf of users—Ready discussed the evolving AI landscape and its implications for the company. In light of a projected weaker holiday season, attributed to economic factors like tariffs on home furnishings, Pinterest anticipates its fourth-quarter revenue to range between $1.31 billion and $1.34 billion, falling slightly below analyst expectations. This news led to a drop of over 21% in the company’s stock on Wednesday.
Despite short-term challenges, Ready highlighted avenues for leveraging AI and large language models (LLMs) without significantly raising costs. He noted that while Pinterest already uses proprietary models, the company consistently tests leading off-the-shelf models against open source alternatives and has observed promising results. “The performance we’re achieving with open source models tailored for Pinterest use cases in visual AI is exceptional,” Ready stated. He revealed that initial tests show a significant cost reduction with comparable performance when using fine-tuned open source models instead of traditional proprietary options.
Ready affirmed the company’s commitment to adopting various open source models, which would allow Pinterest to operate at a fraction of the cost of larger competitors. He expressed confidence in the platform’s ability to enhance the user experience while maintaining monetization and cost management.
Additionally, Ready mentioned Pinterest’s efforts in agentic shopping, noting that the platform already offers “push-button type buying” in partnership with Amazon. He indicated that the company would evaluate user interest in allowing AI to perform purchases on their behalf.
He further described Pinterest’s unique positioning in user guidance throughout the shopping experience, aiming to improve this with the Pinterest Assistant—an AI companion that can interact with users to provide personalized advice based on their boards and interests. Furthermore, Pinterest is launching personalized boards that blend expert human curation with AI, underscoring its commitment to enhancing the user experience through innovative technology.
