eBay Leaves Auction Roots Behind for an AI Overhaul
eBay wants to escape the shadow of its auction house past, so it’s undergoing a technological metamorphosis. The 30-year-old e-commerce veteran has tumbled from second to fourth place among America’s largest online retailers, trailing behind Amazon, Walmart, and Apple. However, CEO Jamie Iannone believes an AI makeover will give the company “an opportunity to really be on the leading edge, both with our customer experience, but also with how we innovate.”
- The company’s pivot includes rolling out personalized shopping agents and launching “magical listings” to auto-generate product descriptions from photos.
- eBay’s latest quarter delivered $368M in profit compared to $224M the previous year, with rising gross merchandise volume helping to offset competitive pressures.
Old data, new weapon: CTO Mazen Rawashdeh admitted that “if eBay were in a race, we were maybe trailing,” but argued that “the AI era reset the clock for us.” The company’s secret weapon lies in three decades of transaction data from billions of buyer-seller interactions, which feeds its large language models with consumer insights competitors can’t replicate. Deutsche Bank analyst Lee Horowitz believes eBay doesn’t need to capture mass retail share to satisfy investors, as continued growth in focus categories like trading cards and luxury goods could be enough to keep Wall Street content.
