$160B Market Cap, $5.48B Revenue, $10M EBITDA Per Head: Inside AppLovin’s Profit Engine

AppLovin CEO Adam Foroughi on rebuilding from a 92% stock drop, cutting 40-50% of staff during triple-digit growth, and why enterprise SaaS may never recover.

• AppLovin’s core advertising unit runs on ~400 people and generates over $10M EBITDA per head, with 80%+ margins.
• In 2022, stock fell 92% despite 40% EBITDA growth to $1B; Foroughi attributes collapse to a weak COVID-era cap table of forced sellers.
• Foroughi’s targeted buyback — buying directly from known sellers, not open market — is credited with generating roughly $50B of AppLovin’s ~$150B market cap.
• In 2024, during triple-digit revenue growth, Foroughi cut 40-50% of staff per department to force an AI-native org rebuild before automation made those roles redundant.
• AppLovin rebuilt its core recommendation model from scratch in 2022 (Axon 2, launched April 2023), scrapping the old ML system entirely at the bottom of the drawdown.
• Foroughi argues most current tech layoffs are COVID-overhiring hangovers, not AI efficiency gains — the real AI-driven cuts haven’t happened yet.
• Enterprise SaaS devaluation is fair and likely not finished: LLM advancement destroys terminal value assumptions, and high SBC compounds the problem as stock falls.
• Foroughi names Anthropic as currently the best model producer despite not spending the most on compute, attributing it to culture and research focus.

2026-04-27 · Watch on YouTube