Pinterest CEO Touts Open Source AI: ‘Tremendous Performance’ with Reduced Costs

Why It Matters

Cutting AI infrastructure costs can bolster Pinterest’s margins and support growth despite a weaker holiday sales outlook, and its push toward cost‑effective, AI‑driven shopping experiences could enhance user engagement and monetization across the visual discovery market.

Summary

Pinterest CEO Bill Ready told investors that open‑source AI models are delivering "tremendous performance" on the company’s visual‑AI use cases at a fraction of the cost of proprietary large‑language models, enabling cheaper personalization, multimodal search, ad targeting and the new AI‑powered Pinterest Assistant. The company forecast fourth‑quarter revenue of $1.31‑$1.34 billion, slightly below analysts’ $1.34 billion estimate, prompting a more‑than‑21% share decline. Ready said Pinterest will expand the use of fine‑tuned open‑source models across its platform and continue testing agentic commerce features, while also rolling out AI‑curated personalized boards that blend human expertise with machine learning.