Live shopping platform Whatnot to open to Irish sellers as it announces jobs plans

Company opened new European headquarters in Dublin on Tuesday

IDA Ireland executive director Mary Buckley, Whatnot co-founder and CEO Grant LaFontaine, Minister of State Alan Dillon at the opening of Whatnot's new European headquarters in Dublin. Picture: Fennells Photography

Live shopping platform Whatnot plans to double its Irish workforce after opening its new European headquarters in Dublin on Tuesday.

The company currently employs more than 130 people across Ireland, and plans to double this to 260 over the next 18 months. The company is hiring across engineering and AI, operations, strategy, and trust and safety.

Whatnot allows individuals and small businesses to sell through live video, showing products, answering questions, and taking orders in real time. Sales generated on the platform were worth more than €6.8bn in the first half of 2026, exceeding the platform’s total for all of 2025. 

The platform will open to Irish small businesses in 2027. The number of people in Ireland shopping on Whatnot each month has grown almost fivefold over the past two years. Because Irish businesses can’t yet sell on the platform, all of those items currently come from sellers based outside Ireland, with most orders filled by sellers in the UK, Germany, and the US. Purchases of Irish heritage items like collectible crystal and sporting memorabilia have more than tripled over the past year.

Whatnot's Dublin engineers work on platform's buying and selling flows, payments, and coding infrastructure. The new AI engineering roles will build tools to ease the administrative burden on sellers, 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. “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.” 

IDA Ireland executive director Mary Buckley said Whatnot’s decision to expand its Dublin team demonstrates "strong confidence in Ireland’s technology ecosystem and skilled workforce".