Despite disappointing revenue, Pinterest says it gets more searches than ChatGPT
The company reported a fourth-quarter profit shortfall, with revenue broadly in line with expectations.
Following a particularly poor fourth-quarter earnings report, Pinterest CEO Bill Ready attempted to favorably compare the digital pin site to popular artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT.
In an attempt to highlight its potential as a unique search destination, Ready said the site’s search volume is higher than ChatGPT’s. According to third-party data, ChatGPT gets 75 billion searches per month, while Pinterest gets 80 billion searches and generates 1.7 billion clicks per month, he said.
“That makes us one of the largest search destinations in the world. And importantly, more than half of those searches are commercial in nature, compared to, I think… approximately 2% [of ChatGPT searches],” Ready added.
Pinterest missed revenue and earnings per share expectations in the fourth quarter, reporting revenue of $1.32 billion, compared to the $1.33 billion forecast, and earnings per share of 67 cents, compared to the 69 cents forecast. It also expects first-quarter 2026 sales of $951 million to $971 million, down from the $980 million forecast.
The company blamed the shortfall on larger advertisers cutting spending, particularly in Europe, and on a new furniture tariff that took effect in October, which has caused problems in the home category, and said those trends could worsen in the first quarter.
Surprisingly, Pinterest missed earnings estimates despite a user base growing faster than expected. The company reported monthly active users were up 12% year-over-year to 619 million, when Wall Street had forecast 613 million users.
Shares dropped 20% in after-hours trading.
When asked how Pinterest will move toward AI-powered shopping, Ready pointed to the company’s visual search, discovery, and personalization features, which he said will guide users to relevant products when they open the app.
“We’re helping them complete those commercial journeys without having to type in a single prompt,” he said, also noting that Pinterest had benefited from an easier checkout flow that came from its partnership with Amazon. He said customers didn’t yet seem ready to allow an AI to purchase on their behalf, but said Pinterest would be ready if that time came.
“That’ll actually be one of the easiest parts of the commercial journey to solve,” he claimed.
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