Related-party dealings at AppLovin

analysisAppLovin's 2026 proxy states that since January 1, 2025 its only transactions above $120,000 with related persons are the Investor Rights Agreement with Adam Foroughi, which lets him and an affiliate require the registration of their shares, the Equity Exchange Right Agreement with Herald Chen, and the employment of Rafael Vivas. Under Chen's agreement, Class A shares he receives from pre-IPO options can be exchanged for Class B shares; options over 330,201 shares remained in March 2026. ¹

analysisRafael Vivas, brother of director Eduardo Vivas, is an employee who received a $400,000 salary in 2025; according to the trade press he headed the Lion Studios publishing division at its 2018 launch. AppLovin lent him $2.3 million in 2019 to exercise options early, and the note was repaid in March 2024. Cookie Monster Capital, a game developer owned by Eduardo Vivas, received $0.7 million in 2021 and $0.2 million in 2022 under a game publishing agreement. ^{1 2 3 4 5 6}

analysisIn February 2024 AppLovin agreed to invest $50 million in Humans, Inc., developer of the Flip Shop app, for about 4.1%; Flip Shop then merged with Curated, Inc., founded and run by Eduardo Vivas, who became its chief operating officer, a director and a holder of more than 5%. AppLovin treated Humans as a related party until Vivas left in September 2025; no revenue-share transactions took place, and AppLovin wrote off the whole investment in 2025. ^{7 2}

analysisBefore the IPO AppLovin lent Herald Chen $12,120,000, Katie Jansen three notes totalling about $2.6 million, Vasily Shikin two notes and Victoria Valenzuela $4,863,343 to exercise options early; all were repaid in February 2021. In December 2019 it bought back shares from Foroughi and Eduardo Vivas for promissory notes of $10.0 million and $1.2 million, repaid in 2021, and in February 2021 it bought shares from Chen for $12.3 million and from Valenzuela for $4.9 million. ^{1 2 3 4}

analysisIn March 2024 AppLovin bought 3,000,000 shares from Midterm Success Limited, then a holder of more than 5%, for about $182 million, which its 2025 proxy reports as a related-party transaction. In the IPO's directed share programme director Margaret Georgiadis bought 3,600 shares and the spouse of director Craig Billings 202 shares. ^{5 4}

analysisSince selling its Apps business to Tripledot in June 2025, AppLovin accounts for its stake by the equity method and treats Tripledot and its subsidiaries as related parties; it recognised $19.0 million of revenue from them by the end of 2025. ¹