Leading Southern European marketplace to deploy Albatross AI discovery across its platform

Founded in Barcelona in 2013 and present in Spain, Italy and Portugal, Wallapop aims to create a unique inventory ecosystem of reused products. On Wallapop it is possible to buy and sell products from all categories of consumer goods easily, quickly and securely. It is also a reference in more specific categories such as motor vehicles. With Albatross, Wallapop becomes one of the first C2C marketplaces globally to move beyond static, history-based recommendation systems toward in-session, adaptive discovery that understands user intent as it unfolds.

In practice, this means discovery on Wallapop becomes more pro-active and responsive. For instance, when a user explores a second-hand sofa and then starts browsing rugs or floor lamps, the system understands the shift from evaluating a single item to furnishing a living space. Instead of continuing to surface more sofas, as traditional recommenders do, discovery adapts in real time, highlighting relevant complementary items across categories, including products the user didn’t know existed.

As the session continues, the experience keeps evolving: a user who then clicks on a vintage coffee table may start seeing lighting, paintings, décor, or storage pieces that match the same style, even if they never looked for them explicitly. This allows users to uncover highly relevant listings that feel like genuine finds, rather than variations of what they’ve already seen. Crucially, this allows discovery to keep pace as interests change (even within the same session) and helps the right listings surface at the right moment.

Early production deployments have shown significant impact, beyond what is possible with traditional recommenders. In a four-week A/B test on 10% of Wallapop’s traffic, measuring performance across the entire homepage experience, the platform yielded:

• Increase in User Engagement: +118.9%
• Increase in Favorites & Interactions: +104.8%
• Increase Purchase Intentions: +46.9%

Demanding real-world environment

For Albatross, Wallapop represents a demanding real-world environment for AI discovery. With a constantly evolving catalog of one-of-a-kind items and high listing velocity, Wallapop provides an ideal setting to validate and scale in-session perception models under real marketplace constraints.

“Together with Wallapop, we’re delivering an online discovery experience comparable to the best in-store journey; one where users uncover products that feel like true hidden gems, tailored just for them, in real time” said Dr. Kevin Kahn, CEO of Albatross AI. “While large language models make sense of words, Albatross’ perception model makes sense of the sequence and context of user actions as they happen. This partnership demonstrates a radical shift in discovery, search, and personalization, which have seen little innovation for more than a decade.”

The partnership represents one of the earliest large-scale commercial deployments of adaptive, in-session AI discovery in recommerce, reinforcing Wallapop’s ambition to lead the next phase of marketplace evolution.

“At Wallapop, we are moving toward a system that understands what users want in real time, helping buyers find the right items faster while giving sellers more effective visibility for their listings,” says Rob Cassedy, CEO of Wallapop. “Our collaboration with Albatross represents another step forward in our mission to empower people to participate in a more conscious consumption model that creates economic opportunities for people.”