“Build or buy” has long been the question for companies looking to integrate AI models—years ago in the earlier machine-learning era and still today amid the generative AI boom. While options for off-the-shelf offerings are stronger than ever, Pinterest is one company firmly planting its stake in the former.
Pinterest tells Fortune the company is using open-source AI models to achieve performance similar to that of leading frontier AI models at less than 10% of the cost, particularly for visual and multimodal tasks, along with models it has built in-house for specific purposes. The company solidified the decision in late 2025 and views it as the most pivotal aspect of its AI transformation strategy, citing better personalization for users, the ability to scale faster, and most of all, significant cost savings.
“We’re a smaller company, so cost matters,” Vicky Gkiza, VP of product management at Pinterest, told Fortune. “We’re trying to be as mindful for the user as well as for the economics.”
Pinterest’s AI pivot
The pivot began with noticing a shift. Gkiza said the company is continuously evaluating different models, and a few months ago, felt the advancement in open-source AI significantly narrowed the performance gap relative to leading closed models.
