Mercado Libre Extends Strong Growth in Q3: GMV Reaches $23 Billion, Builds AI Shopping Agent

【Ebrun Original】November 9 news: Mercado Libre, the Latin American e-commerce and fintech giant, has reported its financial results for the third quarter of 2026. The company achieved accelerated expansion in both of its core business segments: e-commerce and advertising.

According to the earnings report, net revenue and financial income for the quarter reached $10.75 billion, up 45% year-over-year in dollar terms, marking the 31st consecutive quarter of growth above 30%. Operating profit was $676 million, with a margin of 6.3%.

Meanwhile, the company's e-commerce business continued to gain momentum in key Latin American markets, with gross merchandise value (GMV) and unit sales hitting new highs.

During the reporting period, Mercado Libre's quarterly GMV reached $23 billion, up 38% year-over-year; the number of items sold on the platform reached 867 million, up 36% year-over-year. The number of unique buyers exceeded 93.9 million, up 22% year-over-year; the average number of items purchased per user reached 9.2, up 12% year-over-year.

In terms of logistics and fulfillment, Mercado Libre's same-day and next-day delivery orders reached 258 million, up 49% year-over-year; 79% of packages across its fast shipping network were delivered within 48 hours. It is understood that ahead of the peak season, the company increased its local fulfillment floor space in Latin America by nearly 20% quarter-over-quarter. This expansion strategy has yielded significant results, further improving Mercado Libre's delivery efficiency in the Latin American market.

At the same time, Mercado Libre fully upgraded its China warehouse fulfillment service system, establishing a new 60,000-square-meter warehouse base in Dongguan with total capacity exceeding 5 million items and a peak daily outbound capacity of 500,000 items. The warehouse operations have fully introduced automated conveyance, sorting, and multi-line packing verification systems, significantly improving efficiency across the entire process from inbound to outbound.

By region, the Brazilian market continued to be an important growth engine for Mercado Libre, with outstanding performance.

In the third quarter, its Brazilian market unit sales grew 36% year-over-year, item volume grew 45% year-over-year; active buyers grew 29% year-over-year, and the average number of items purchased per buyer increased 19% year-over-year; over the past five quarters, Mercado Libre's shipped items in Brazil grew by more than 40%.

The earnings call noted that in Brazil, the platform's depth of engagement with consumers is increasing significantly, and the number of registered users participating in the loyalty program is accelerating.

Other core markets also maintained rapid growth.

In Mexico, GMV grew 21% year-over-year, items sold grew 25%, active buyers grew 21%, and market share reached a new high. Recently, Mercado Libre also opened an intelligent robotic fulfillment center in Hidalgo, Mexico, completing a logistics infrastructure upgrade. To date, Mercado Libre has 17 large fulfillment centers and 124 sorting and delivery stations across Mexico, with total infrastructure area exceeding 2 million square meters, and has achieved same-day delivery in more than 37 key cities.

The Argentine market, despite a challenging macroeconomic retail environment, saw GMV surge 40% year-over-year and items sold grow 19%. In September, the platform fully expanded MELI's free shipping coverage for low-priced items, with repurchase frequency reaching a record high.

In other markets, unit sales grew 44% year-over-year and GMV grew 43% year-over-year, also showing considerable growth.

In advertising, Mercado Ads continued its rapid growth.

In the quarter, advertising revenue grew 58% year-over-year in dollar terms, driven mainly by strong advertising demand in Brazil.

On the other hand, in addition to rapid growth in on-platform retail media advertising, Mercado Ads also established cross-border strategic partnerships with streaming and social platforms such as Netflix, extending its commercial media ecosystem off-platform and creating a full-funnel closed loop from broad exposure to on-platform conversion.

Mercado Libre CFO Martin de los Santos also revealed that the platform continued to increase strategic investment in affiliate marketing channels this quarter. Its Affiliate Program now has 12 million members.

In addition, the accelerating penetration of AI technology is also noteworthy.

According to disclosures, Mercado Libre's AI investment increased by nearly $30 million quarter-over-quarter this quarter, and AI usage is growing significantly faster than investment. Currently, the company is improving investment efficiency in two ways: selecting more suitable models for different tasks, and reducing the cost of using various models.

Martin de los Santos said the company can measure the incremental benefits brought by models through search result click-through rate (CTR) and conversion rate. Currently, the incremental revenue generated by incorporating LLMs into search algorithms has exceeded the additional cost of the models themselves.

On the seller side, 56,000 sellers are now using Mercado Libre's AI advisor to manage advertising campaigns, nearly four times more than three months ago.

In addition, Mercado Libre launched a brand advertising product called Engage. This product uses AI to analyze the platform's purchase data, predict which consumers are most likely to buy products in a brand's category, and then allocate advertising budgets to these potential consumers. The product is currently live on six Mercado Libre sites.

Regarding whether Mercado Libre would consider allowing third-party AI shopping agents such as ChatGPT to directly search and purchase, CEO Ariel Szarfsztejn explicitly stated that the company will not open its product inventory to any external platform for now. Mercado Libre wants to build a complete agentic shopping experience within its own app, rather than first gaining traffic by connecting to third-party AI platforms. By offering an AI shopping experience within its own ecosystem, Mercado Libre hopes to maintain users' habit of visiting the app directly.

Ariel revealed that Mercado Libre's own AI shopping agent has been opened to a small group of users in its three largest markets: Brazil, Mexico, and Argentina. He described the current test results as "preliminary but encouraging," but specific results have not yet been disclosed.

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