Is Pinterest's AI Strategy Creating Long-Term Value for Investors?

Pinterest, Inc. (PINS) is focusing on AI integration to make its platform smarter by improving content discovery, personalization, and ad performance. AI plays a key role in making Pinterest’s visual discovery engine more intuitive and relevant for users.

The company deploys AI to study users' behavior and interests to recommend Pins and boards that match what they like, helping users easily discover ideas they care about, such as fashion, home décor, recipes, and shopping. PINS’ AI-powered visual search enables users to find similar items and shop directly by tapping on images instead of typing text. The company’s AI recommendation model not only improves personalization, but it also effectively anticipates emerging trends.

By labeling and filtering AI-generated images, Pinterest is giving users more control over what they see, showing its focus on responsible and trustworthy AI use. Increased use of AI benefits PINS by improving user engagement and ad performance, which drives higher revenue growth and long-term profitability.

Introduction of such intuitive features has steadily driven users to its platform over the past several quarters. In the third quarter of 2025, Pinterest reported a global monthly active user of 600 million users, registering 17% year-over-year growth. Such strong momentum is expected to continue in the upcoming quarters as well. Per our estimate, in 2025, Pinterest's monthly active users are expected to reach 615.1 million, indicating 11.2% growth year over year

How Are Competitors Advancing in the AI Market?

Pinterest faces competition from SNAP, Inc. (SNAP) and Meta Platforms, Inc. (META). Meta is using AI across its apps to increase user engagement and ad revenues by improving recommendations, creative tools, and personalized experiences for its billions of users worldwide. Meta has shifted its focus from the metaverse to AI by creating Meta Superintelligence Labs to build advanced AI products quickly. Meta recently announced that Meta AI will provide real-time news and content across its apps through partnerships with major media publishers like CNN and USA TODAY.

SNAP is becoming a leader in mobile AI by using it in social interaction, search, creativity, AR, and shopping, making Snapchat more engaging for almost a billion users. SNAP uses AI tools to help advertisers run better campaigns and let users create more engaging content. AI tools like My AI and AI Lenses powered by Snapchat provide users with more than 500 million to chat, get information, and create or edit images and videos directly in the app.

PINS’ Price Performance, Valuation & Estimates

Pinterest shares have lost 11.6% over the past year against the industry’s growth of 6.9%.

From a valuation standpoint, Pinterest trades at a forward price-to-sales ratio of 3.66, below the industry tally of 4.87.

The Zacks Consensus Estimate for Pinterest’s earnings for 2025 has declined 8% to $1.62, and the estimate for 2026 has decreased 8.3% to $1.88 over the past 60 days.

Pinterest currently carries a Zacks Rank #4 (Sell).

You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

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This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).

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