Adam Foroughi, Applovin CEO: Surviving a 92% Drawdown, Ads as ML 1.0 & the $50B Game Ad Market
AppLovin CEO Adam Foroughi joins the All-In hosts to explain how the company survived a 92% stock crash and rebuilt into a major ad-tech player through buybacks and better AI models.
The gist
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AppLovin bought back $6 billion of its own stock during the crash, shares that later grew to around $50 billion in value.
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Foroughi says shifting from older regression models to deep learning drove a major performance jump, making the ad engine harder for rivals to copy.
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AppLovin originally bought game studios just to seed its AI training data, then sold them once outside partners started sharing data instead.
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To keep staff through the downturn, the company gave performance-based equity plans to key employees, not just executives, and communicated the recovery upside openly.
Also mentioned
5:57
ChatGPT
· "OpenAI has an ad product now. I'm sure you've been monitoring it and trying to learn from it. What is..."
7:24
Meta
· "You create that discovery moment. Not only is it a really fun moment for the consumer, but you create..."
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