eBay is carving out more space in its capital expenditure budget to fund its push into generative artificial intelligence.
The online marketplace is carving out more space in its capital expenditure budget to fund its push into generative artificial intelligence. eBay needs to disclose how much it is spending on GPUs. Still, according to its Chief Financial Officer, investments aimed at supporting generative AI are accounting for a more significant share of the company’s capital expenditures.
The company expects total capital expenditures in 2024 to remain steady at between 4% and 5% of revenue compared with last year. In 2023, it generated $10.1 billion, up 3% from a year earlier.
eBay is an American multinational e-commerce company based in San Jose, California. It brokers customer-to-customer and retail sales through online marketplaces in 190 markets worldwide. Sales occur via online auctions or “buy it now” instant sales, and the company charges commissions to sellers upon sales.
Buyers and sellers may rate and review each other after each transaction, resulting in a reputation system. eBay is accessible via websites and mobile apps. Software developers can create applications that integrate with eBay through the eBay API. Merchants can also earn commissions from eBay’s affiliate marketing programs.
Last fall, eBay launched its magical listing tool, which helps sellers create listings by extrapolating details about a product from an image. Other uses of generative AI at the company include customer-facing features that, for instance, recommend apparel to shoppers and internal company tools aimed at helping software developers improve their productivity.
We have a three-pronged approach to our generative AI strategy, the first being the listing process. So, really, these are seller-facing tools, including description generation and listing generation, as well as some of the image modification and enhancements that generative AI enables sellers to do with our tools to create more engaging and studio-quality photography and listings, as said by Mekel-Bobrov.
ebay’s chief AI officers have provided breakdown details to the Wall Street Journal. We’re investing in areas outside of customer experiences to drive better efficiency and velocity. We’re also looking at investing in our customer support areas to ultimately invest in those products to save money in the short term.
Certainly, we’ve seen elements of momentum from these investments in generative AI. Nitzan talked about the magical listing, whether it’s item description or the other stuff we’re doing in beta. We are seeing customer satisfaction go up significantly from our investments.
Customers lean in and use those AI-generated descriptions when they drive additional selling. Thus, friction is coming off the marketplace, enabling sellers to list more products to ensure more healthy inventory in the overall market. Inevitably, we’re seeing benefits under the hood.
