Netflix Builds Unified Contextual Recommender UniCoRn

Moumita Bhattacharya, a Netflix machine learning manager, outlines UniCoRn, a unified contextual recommender developed to serve both search and recommendation tasks across Netflix. UniCoRn replaced four production rankers, aiming to reduce maintenance and tech debt while supporting second-pass ranking, offline evaluation, and low-latency inference for Netflix’s 300 million-plus users and catalogs exceeding 100 million items. This consolidation accelerates cross-product innovation.