After a very poor performance on its fourth-quarter earnings, Pinterest CEO Invoice Prepared tried to favorably examine the digital pinboarding website to the favored AI chatbot ChatGPT.
Attempting to spotlight its potential as a singular search vacation spot, Prepared asserted that the positioning sees bigger search quantity than ChatGPT. In response to third-party knowledge, ChatGPT sees 75 billion searches per thirty days, whereas Pinterest sees 80 billion searches and generates 1.7 billion month-to-month clicks, he stated.
“That makes us one of many largest search locations on this planet. And importantly, greater than half of these searches are industrial in nature, in comparison with, I feel . . . roughly 2% [of ChatGPT searches],” Prepared added.
Pinterest within the fourth quarter missed expectations on each income and earnings per share, reporting $1.32 billion in income versus $1.33 billion anticipated, and earnings per share of 67 cents, in comparison with the 69 cents projected. It additionally forecast that first-quarter 2026 gross sales will are available in between $951 million to $971 million, under the $980 million anticipated.
The corporate blamed its shortfall on bigger advertisers pulling again on spend, notably in Europe, and a brand new furnishings tariff applied in October that prompted points throughout the dwelling class. It stated these traits might worsen within the first quarter.
Surprisingly, Pinterest missed on earnings regardless of a person base that’s rising sooner than anticipated. The corporate reported month-to-month energetic customers have been up 12% year-over-year to 619 million, when Wall Road had forecast 613 million customers.
Shares dropped 20% in after-hours buying and selling.
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June 23, 2026
Pinterest has lengthy struggled to translate the excessive utilization of its platform into advert {dollars}, as its customers typically go to Pinterest to plan and dream, not store and purchase. That problem might turn out to be much more acute within the AI period, particularly if advertisers shift their {dollars} to platforms the place intent to purchase is clearer — resembling chatbot requests that ask for product suggestions.
When requested about how Pinterest will navigate the shift towards AI-powered buying, Prepared pointed to the corporate’s visible search, discovery, and personalization options, which he stated would level customers to related merchandise after they open the app.
“We’re serving to them full these industrial journeys with out having to kind in a single immediate,” he stated, additionally noting that Pinterest had benefited from a neater checkout circulation that got here from its partnership with Amazon. He stated clients didn’t but appear prepared to permit an AI to make a purchase order on their behalf, however stated Pinterest can be prepared if that point got here.
“That’ll truly be one of many best components of the industrial journey to resolve,” he claimed.
