Empowering Personalized Experiences with Hopsworks: The AI Platform Behind Zalando's Success
In the digital age, personalized experiences are becoming more prevalent thanks to AI systems that can quickly respond to user actions. TikTok, for example, used personalized video content to stand out from its larger US competitors. Online retailers like Zalando are also embracing personalization to offer tailored customer experiences. However, the challenge lies in building and maintaining software infrastructure that can meet high performance, security, and governance requirements. With over 62 million active users, Zalando relies on Hopsworks to handle millions of operations per second during peak times, such as Cyber week.
Contrary to the perception that Europe lacks high-end software platforms for AI systems, Zalando is proving otherwise by utilizing Hopsworks, a European-owned and operated AI platform, to power its most demanding AI services. While US giants like Snowflake and Databricks dominate the conference season in June with talks of innovation in Data and AI, Hopsworks is focused on action. With a team of over 10 PhDs, Hopsworks is dedicated to building the world's highest performance data platform to create truly interactive AI systems that respond at human-like speeds.
Hopsworks stands out as the leading unified platform for developing batch, real-time, and LLM-powered AI systems, allowing organizations to transform raw data into production-ready AI and Data products at scale. As a European-founded AI platform, Hopsworks is designed for organizations that prioritize data sovereignty and regulatory compliance. Its core features include a robust AI Lakehouse that integrates a feature store, model registry, and vector database to support the entire pipeline lifecycle from data ingestion to batch, real-time, and agent inference.
With a reported €17.6B GMV in 2025, Zalando has surpassed Allegro and Otto Group to become Europe's largest online retailer. This success underscores the importance of leveraging advanced AI platforms like Hopsworks to drive innovation and deliver exceptional customer experiences.