Acquisition
Jul 2026Whatnot acquired Shaped; the founder/CEO and nearly a dozen engineers and researchers joined Whatnot, ending Shaped's run as an independent company.
SourceThe real-time retrieval engine for search, feeds, and agents.
Company research
Public company, workplace, funding, and market signals
Updated Jul 29, 2026
Overview
Shaped was a New York-based B2B AI infrastructure company for real-time recommendations, search, feeds, and agent memory. Its core product was a unified relevance engine centered on ShapedQL; on 2026-07-15 it announced it had been acquired by Whatnot, with founder/CEO Tullie Murrell and much of the team joining Whatnot.
Primary product
Real-time retrieval and relevance engine (ShapedQL) for search, feeds, recommendations, and agent memory
Founded
2021
Headquarters
New York City, New York, United States
Team size
10-20
Work style
Onsite
Industry
Software Development
Sub-industry
AI infrastructure for search, recommendations, and personalization
Offices
New York City, New York, United States
Brooklyn, New York, United States
Business model
B2B SaaS
Usage-based API/platform
Enterprise software
Developer platform
Funding
People & investors
Leadership
CEO & Co-Founder
Co-Founder & Chief Operating Officer
Head of GTM
Founding Account Executive
Sheikh Md. Kibria
Founding Full-stack Engineer
Founders
Co-Founder
Investors
Ace & Company
Executives and directors from Twitter, Uber, Facebook, Amazon, Afterpay, Yelp, Forge, and ClickUp
Executives and founders from ClickHouse, Docusign, Okta, Rippling, and Stitch Fix
Global Founders Capital
Liquid 2 Ventures
Madrona Ventures
Partners from Kleiner Perkins and Mango Capital
Rogue Capital
Susa Ventures
Tribe Capital
Uncommon Capital
Y Combinator
Work & culture
Technical, product-led, and very execution-focused; public hiring posts emphasize autonomy, ownership, fast iteration, and an in-person NYC environment. Recent role posts said the company was in the office 5 days a week, with flexibility for unavoidable conflicts, plus strong emphasis on ML, retrieval, and shipping quickly.
Work style
Onsite
Visa sponsorship
Limited
Compensation
Public postings showed NYC full-time roles with base pay roughly from $60K-$200K depending on role, plus equity. Some job listings indicated sponsorship may be available for certain roles, but no formal universal policy was publicly stated.
Benefits
Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision insurance
Flexible Spending Account (FSA)
Health Savings Account (HSA)
Expert healthcare guidance
Retirement savings
Company holidays
Unlimited days for personal time
Flex commuter benefits
Office stocked with drinks and snacks
Dinner provided when working late
Quarterly offsite
Product & market
Pricing
Usage-based pricing with a free Starter tier, a Standard tier with a $500/month minimum, and custom Enterprise contracts.
Differentiators
- —ShapedQL SQL interface for retrieval/ranking/reordering
- —Real-time personalization and low-latency serving
- —30+ native connectors
- —Hybrid search that blends semantic and keyword signals
- —Built-in experimentation and explainability
- —No-ETL / data-warehouse-friendly integration
- —White-glove ML support
- —Multi-objective ranking around business KPIs
Technology
Python
TypeScript
React
SQL
ClickHouse
Kafka
Apache Spark
Apache Flink
Snowflake
Kubernetes
Terraform
dbt
PyTorch
MySQL
MongoDB
Segment
Amplitude
HubSpot
Customers
New York Magazine / Vox Media
SidelineSwap
Brandazine
Atmosfy
Outdoorsy
QVC
Trela
Competitors
AWS Personalize
Recombee
Lucidworks Fusion
Custom in-house recommendation/search stacks
Scale & contact
Estimated revenue
$2M-$2.4M
Estimated monthly visits
65.5K
Traffic estimate as of Dec 2025
Signals & risks
Latest news
TechCrunch · Jul 2026
Whatnot announced it acquired Shaped; Tullie Murrell and nearly a dozen engineers/researchers joined Whatnot to lead applied AI research for discovery and personalization.
Shaped · Jul 2026
Official acquisition announcement stating Shaped was acquired by Whatnot and that the team is joining Whatnot to accelerate AI across live commerce.
Shaped · May 2026
Case study describing a personalized feed for New York Magazine / Vox Media that increased page views per session by 2.5x.
Shaped · Jun 2025
Shaped announced SOC 2 Type 2 certification and emphasized enterprise-grade security for production recommendation and search workloads.
Shaped · Jul 2024
Official Series A announcement for $8M led by Madrona Ventures with participation from Y Combinator and operators/founders from several tech companies.
Jobs and careers at Shaped
0 jobs at Shaped
No open positions
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