AppLovin's stock fell 18.5 percent on its first day of trading. Four years later the company joined the S&P 500. The Palo Alto company made money from mobile games in two ways. It owned studios that made the games, and it ran the ad software that other game makers used to find players. When it went public in April 2021, investors could not tell which half mattered more. The answer turned out to be the ads.

Three Founders, One Feed of Ads

Adam Foroughi, John Krystynak, and Andrew Karam founded AppLovin in 2012. The bet was that app makers would pay well for software that found the users most likely to spend. AppLovin bought game studios to feed its ad business with data and traffic. Its AI ad engine, called Axon, grew into the main source of profit. Foroughi ran the company as CEO.

Selling the Games

AppLovin priced at $80 a share on April 14, 2021, and opened on Nasdaq at $70. The stock spent two years in a slump. Then its new ad engine took off, and profits soared. In June 2025 AppLovin sold its game studios to Tripledot Studios to focus on advertising. It joined the S&P 500 on September 22, 2025, and trades on Nasdaq as APP.

Cover: A Strange Juggler, plate 5, Odilon Redon. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for a juggler (keeping many apps in the air).