MercadoLibre AI Spending Jumps $80 Million as Developer Output Surges

Product / TechIndustry
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Summary · why it matters

MercadoLibre's artificial intelligence investment grew roughly $80 million year over year in the second quarter of 2026, split between the cost of goods sold and Product Development, as management pointed to tangible returns from the technology. About 20,000 MercadoLibre developers are now using AI, with human-written code becoming the exception; code submissions increased 110% year over year, merged code more than doubled, and deployments rose nearly 75%, even as rollbacks declined. AI agents independently reviewed more than half a million code submissions and migrated roughly 9,000 services to newer platforms over the past year. The company completed the rollout of its AI-powered search architecture across its five largest sites, generating higher conversion and click-through rates that management said more than offset third-party LLM costs, while sellers representing almost half of GMV now use Seller Assistant and more than half of Help Portal requests are resolved without human intervention. Higher AI spending has not prevented operating efficiencies, with Product Development expenses falling to 7.2% of net revenues from 8.4% a year earlier and cost per token declining both sequentially and year over year. MercadoLibre, which competes with Amazon.com and Sea Limited, carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold), and the Zacks Consensus Estimate implies current financial-year sales growth of 44.6% with earnings per share down 0.7%, followed by a 28.9% rise in sales and 43.3% earnings growth next fiscal year.

Impact on stocks 3

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MercadoLibre Inc.
MELI
▲ PositiveTechnologyrelevance

AI investment of ~$80M drove 110% more code submissions, higher conversion from AI search, and lower Product Development expense ratio.

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Consumer Discretionary▲ · 1 stocks

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