How AppLovin Built a $100B Ad Machine

<p>Adam Foroughi, Co-Founder &amp; CEO of AppLovin, and Giovanni Ge, CTO of AppLovin, join Sourcery from AppLovin’s Palo Alto headquarters for a deep dive into the technology and strategy behind its advertising business.</p><p>Gio joined AppLovin in late 2022, when the company was worth roughly <strong>$5.5 billion</strong>, and helped architect Axon 2, the recommendation engine that became central to AppLovin’s transformation. The new architecture improved predictions and advertiser returns, helping drive the company’s expansion beyond mobile gaming into e-commerce ads and its recovery from a 92% post-IPO decline to a $100B+ company.</p><p>Adam and Gio break down how Axon works, how AppLovin scales with a remarkably lean engineering team, how AI is changing the way they build, why knowing what <strong>not</strong> to build matters, and what it would take for AppLovin to eventually become a trillion-dollar company.</p><p>We also cover AppLovin’s expansion into e-commerce, the future of advertising across LLMs and connected TV, engineering culture, and how they think about building for the next five to ten years.</p><p><br></p><p><strong>Adam Foroughi: </strong><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/adamforoughi/" target="_blank" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer">https://www.linkedin.com/in/adamforoughi/</a></p><p><strong>Giovanni Ge:</strong> <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/xiaochuan-giovanni-ge" target="_blank" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer">https://www.linkedin.com/in/xiaochuan-giovanni-ge</a>/</p><p><strong>Molly O’Shea:</strong> <a href="https://x.com/MollySOShea" target="_blank" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer">https://x.com/MollySOShea</a> </p><p><strong>Sourcery:</strong> ⁠<a href="https://x.com/sourceryy" target="_blank" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer">https://x.com/sourceryy</a> </p><p><br></p><p>𝐄𝐏𝐈𝐒𝐎𝐃𝐄 𝐋𝐈𝐍𝐊</p><p>YouTube: <a href="https://youtu.be/IZHwulZQixQ" target="_blank" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer">https://youtu.be/IZHwulZQixQ</a></p><p><br></p><p>𝐒𝐏𝐎𝐍𝐒𝐎𝐑𝐒</p><p>• <a href="https://brex.com/sourcery" target="_blank" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer"><strong>Brex</strong></a>—The modern finance platform, combining the world’s smartest corporate card with integrated expense management, banking, bill pay, &amp; travel. <a href="https://brex.com/sourcery" target="_blank" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer">https://brex.com/sourcery</a> </p><p>• <a href="https://turing.com/sourcery" target="_blank" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer"><strong>Turing</strong></a>—Turing delivers top-tier talent, data, and tools to help AI labs improve model performance—and enables enterprises to turn those models into powerful, production-ready systems. <a href="https://turing.com/sourcery" target="_blank" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer">https://turing.com/sourcery</a> </p><p>• <a href="https://fundrise.com/vcx" target="_blank" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer"><strong>VCX</strong></a>—VCX is the public ticker for private tech, allowing investors of all sizes to invest in venture capital. View The Portfolio at <a href="http://getvcx.com" target="_blank" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer">http://GetVCX.com</a>  </p><p>• <a href="https://www.deel.com/sourcery" target="_blank" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer"><strong>Deel</strong></a>—Deel is the global people platform that helps startups hire, manage, pay, and equip anyone, anywhere. Trusted by more than 35,000 fast-growing companies, Deel is the people platform that just works, so teams can scale without the chaos. Visit: https://www.deel.com/sourcery</p><p>• <a href="http://public.com/sourcery" target="_blank" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer"><strong>Public</strong></a>–Investing platform Public just launched <a href="https://public.com/generated-asset" target="_blank" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer">Generated Assets</a>, which lets you turn any idea into an investable index with AI. With Generated Assets, you can build, backtest, refine, and invest in any thesis with AI. Gone are the days of one-size-fits