Whatnot, the largest live commerce platform in North America, the UK and Europe, has opened its new European headquarters in Dublin, announcing plans to double its Irish workforce over the next 18 months and open its platform to Irish small businesses in 2027. The company currently employs more than 130 people across Ireland and is hiring across engineering and AI, operations, strategy, and trust and safety.
The new office is on Sir John Rogerson’s Quay in Dublin’s Silicon Docks, a waterfront that has connected Ireland with international trade for more than 300 years.
Individuals and small businesses sell on Whatnot through live video, showing products, answering questions and taking orders in real time. Hundreds of thousands of sellers generated more than $8 billion (€6.8 billion) in sales in the first half of 2026, exceeding the platform’s total for all of 2025.
Whatnot’s Dublin engineers work on the core of the platform: the buying and selling flows, payments, and the infrastructure that keeps everything reliable and secure. When a seller in Berlin, Manchester, Chicago, or Melbourne gets paid, that runs through code written in Ireland. The new AI engineering roles will build tools that take admin work off sellers’ plates, from listing products to post-show tasks, so they can spend more of their time selling live to their communities.
“The depth of engineering and AI talent coming out of Ireland’s universities is a big part of why we keep growing the team here,” said Grant LaFontaine, co-founder and CEO of Whatnot. “Sellers around the world rely on what our Dublin engineers build every day to grow their businesses, and there’s a lot more to build. We’re also opening the platform to small businesses in Ireland next year, so local shops and entrepreneurs can reach the people already shopping on Whatnot in Ireland and around the world, who will then be able to discover the creativity and talent of Irish businesses and entrepreneurs.”
The audience for Irish sellers is already on the platform. The number of people in Ireland shopping on Whatnot each month has grown almost fivefold over the past two years, with most orders filled by sellers in the UK, Germany and the US. International buyers are also seeking out Irish goods. Purchases of Irish heritage items like collectible crystal and sporting memorabilia have more than tripled over the past year, with US buyers making just over half of them. Because Irish businesses can’t yet sell on the platform, all of those items currently come from sellers based outside Ireland.
Mary Buckley, Executive Director of IDA Ireland said: “Whatnot’s decision to expand its Dublin team demonstrates strong confidence in Ireland’s technology ecosystem and skilled workforce. The new roles in engineering, AI, trust & risk, and customer experience highlights the strategic activity being undertaken in Ireland and supports our strategy to attract investments in innovation and digital technologies.”
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