AppLovin provides end-to-end artificial intelligence- (“AI”) powered advertising solutions for businesses to reach, monetize and grow their global audience. Specifically, AppLovin’s advertising solutions purport to use AI models to more efficiently match an advertisement to a prospective consumer and help the Company’s customers achieve their advertising goals, including those concerning user acquisition.
At all relevant times, Defendants have touted the purported strength of AppLovin’s AI models as a major driver of the Company’s growth, advising investors that AppLovin was “constantly improving” its models. Defendants described a “virtuous cycle” of improvement and revenue, in which better models yielded greater returns for the Company’s advertiser customers, thus incentivizing them to increase their spending on AppLovin’s services, and/or incentivizing new customers to begin using AppLovin’s services. Additional engagement by existing and/or new customers provides AppLovin with additional data, thereby enabling the Company to improve its AI models further. During the Class Period, Defendants advised investors that they had seen “faster improvements” to their models and that “we don’t really see a reason why that’s going to slow down.”
Before the Class Period, AppLovin launched a self-service platform for certain customers. On June 22, 2026, AppLovin made this platform, dubbed AppLovin Ads, available to all customers. Among other features, Defendants consistently touted a purportedly forthcoming generative AI video creative tool that would enable customers to create content designed specifically for the AppLovin Ads platform.
The complaint alleges that, throughout the Class Period, Defendants made materially false and misleading statements regarding the Company’s business, operations, and prospects. Specifically, Defendants made false and/or misleading statements and/or failed to disclose that: (i) the generative AI video creative feature for the Company’s AppLovin Ads platform was subject to significant development delays, making its release on the Company’s timeline unlikely; (ii) Defendants overstated the constancy with which AppLovin was improving its AI models; (iii) for these reasons, among others, AppLovin had significantly overstated the benefits and reliability of the purportedly “virtuous cycle” and “compounding” value proposition that its AI models provided to customers and to the Company; and (iv) as a result, Defendants’ public statements were materially false and misleading at all relevant times.
The truth began to emerge on July 13, 2026, when a Bank of America Securities analyst published a note reporting softer-than-expected e-commerce ad growth for the month of June, raising concerns over the rollout of AppLovin Ads to all advertisers. Bank of America Securities’ review of publicly available e-commerce data showed “AppLovin’s eCommerce footprint expanded at a slower pace in June”, and the analyst concluded that the AppLovin Ads [general availability (“GA”)] rollout enjoyed only a “muted . . . start.” Accordingly, based on a “slower initial GA ramp”, Bank of America Securities lowered its expectations of AppLovin’s annual revenue.
Following publication of the note, AppLovin’s stock price fell $64.13 per share, or 12.65%, to close at $442.85 per share on July 13, 2026.
Then, on August 5, 2026, AppLovin issued a press release announcing its financial results for the quarter ended June 30, 2026, and held a conference call to discuss the same. Among other items, AppLovin reported revenue of $1.92 billion, below consensus estimates of $1.94 billion. Defendants attributed their quarterly performance to their “pace of meaningful model improvement”, which was “lighter than normal during the quarter.” Defendants also revealed that their generative AI video tool was “still [a] work in progress.”
On this news, AppLovin’s stock price fell $82.13 per share, or 19.66%, to close at $335.67 per share on August 6, 2026.
