How AppLovin Pays
AppLovin publishes no official bands, so this report builds a B0 through B9 ladder plus a named-executive tier, prices RSUs, market-cap PSUs and a 15 percent discount ESPP, sets $12.97M CEO pay against a 97:1 ratio, and models 21 markets in 15 countries with FY2026 H-1B wage records.
Band Hierarchy
AppLovin publishes no numbered band architecture, no promotion gate and no individual contributor to management equivalency framework. B0 through B9 are an analytical ladder assembled from AppLovin job postings, labour condition application wages and crowdsourced salary records. Only the named executive rows carry a company disclosure, and even those describe four specific people rather than a band.
Individual contributor ladder — B0 through B6
Leadership ladder — B7 through B9
Named executives — 2025 proxy disclosure
Disclosed executive layer
Track divergence
Hierarchy qualifications and legacy structures
- AppLovin has never published a level framework such as L1 to L10 or Band A to Band H. The B0 to B9 codes exist only inside this report and should never be quoted back to a recruiter as an AppLovin band.
- A second public source normalises the same population as A0 to A5 for individual contributors and M3 to M7 for management. The two schemes describe the same evidence with different labels, which is itself a sign that no official scheme exists.
- Levels.fyi exposes a five-step engineering sequence of Software Engineer 1, Software Engineer 2, Senior Software Engineer 1, Senior Software Engineer 2 and Staff Software Engineer. Those are observed level labels, not names AppLovin uses in its filings.
- The crosswalk is most reliable for software engineering and least reliable for commercial, recruiting and data roles, where the crowdsourced role medians range from about $75,000 for business development to about $676,600 for data science.
- Adjust GmbH remains a disclosed significant subsidiary, but AppLovin does not describe whether Adjust carries a legacy grade structure or how titles were harmonised after the acquisition.
Peer-level mapping
| Band | Archetype | Peer mapping | Caveat |
|---|---|---|---|
| B0 | Intern / Co-op | Google STEP and SWE intern, Meta and Microsoft intern programmes | AppLovin publishes no peer-level crosswalk. Internship pay is quoted hourly in the posting and annualised here, which no employee actually receives as an annual salary.AppLovin software engineering intern posting at $70 per hour for bachelor candidates and $80 per hour for master candidates, annualised to a $145,600 to $166,400 band. |
| B1 | Associate / New Grad | Entry engineer or analyst at a large advertising-technology peer | An analytical mapping only. AppLovin has never published a numbered band, so B1 is a construct built from one new-graduate posting and crowdsourced records.A US Software Engineer I new-graduate posting at a $124,000 to $186,000 base plus the Levels.fyi Software Engineer 1 package of $155,000 base, $55,000 stock and $5,000 bonus. |
| B2 | Professional / Software Engineer II | Mid-level engineer or professional at a large advertising-technology peer | Posting evidence shows explicit US geographic zoning at this level, at $157,000 to $207,000 in California, New York and Washington against $133,000 to $176,000 elsewhere.Levels.fyi Software Engineer 2 at $191,000 base, $66,600 stock and $11,600 bonus, cross-checked against Software Engineer II labour condition applications with a $185,000 FY2025 median. |
| B3 | Senior | Senior engineer or senior professional at a large advertising-technology peer | The two published senior rungs disagree sharply. Senior Software Engineer 1 shows $391,500 total on heavy stock while Senior Software Engineer 2 shows $335,000, so this row sits between them.Levels.fyi senior rungs at $205,000 and $223,750 base, senior software engineer labour condition applications with a $220,000 to $225,000 median, and Glassdoor's $242,000 to $361,000 total range. |
| B4 | Staff / Lead | Staff or lead engineer, or a first-line manager on the people track | This is the first level where the individual contributor and management paths visibly separate, and the observed sample is dominated by engineering rather than corporate functions.Levels.fyi Staff Software Engineer at $242,500 base, $331,758 stock and a $574,258 package, bounded by an AI Systems Architect posting at a $218,000 to $327,000 base. |
| B5 | Principal / Engineering Manager | Principal engineer on the technical track, engineering manager on the people track | No AppLovin posting or filing describes this level. The row is anchored to the Levels.fyi software engineering manager role median of about $542,700 and to the staff observation below it.Crowdsourced manager and technical-lead role medians, interpolated between the observed staff package and the director posting band. |
| B6 | Senior Manager / Senior Principal | Senior principal engineer, or senior manager and group manager on the people track | The October 2025 engineering performance share programme suggests a narrow cohort around this level can receive awards far above the modeled figure, but no title threshold is published.Modeled between the disclosed senior technical postings and the director posting band; no direct AppLovin observation exists at this level. |
| B7 | Director / Senior Director | Director or senior director at a large advertising-technology peer | The base band is unusually wide because a single posting spans $221,000 to $362,000 and directors in commercial functions can sit far below directors in engineering.US Director of Growth posting at a $221,000 to $362,000 base and a Toronto Director of Business Development posting at a C$236,000 to C$262,000 base. |
| B8 | Vice President | Vice President at a large advertising-technology peer | AppLovin publishes no VP compensation. The row bridges the observed director postings and the disclosed $400,000 named-executive cash cap, which bounds how high VP salary can plausibly run.Modeled above the director postings and below the disclosed named-executive package; Matthew Stumpf's move from Vice President of Finance to Chief Financial Officer confirms the layer exists. |
| B9 | SVP / EVP / President | SVP, EVP or division president at a large advertising-technology peer | No AppLovin figure exists at this layer. The row is modeled to sit below the disclosed named-executive grant level and is excluded from the range chart.Modeled between the vice president row and the disclosed 2025 named-executive package; the $1.0 million to $5.0 million total range reflects how heavily equity dominates at this layer. |
| NEO | Named executive officer excluding the chief executive | The Trade Desk, Unity and Magnite named executive officers | An average of the three non-CEO named executives for 2025, not a range for every C-suite title. All three received an identical salary and an identical equity grant.2026 proxy Summary Compensation Table averages for Matthew Stumpf, Vasily Shikin and Victoria Valenzuela, whose totals were $12,986,191, $13,395,941 and $13,015,866. |
| CEO | Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder | The Trade Desk, Adobe, Unity, Magnite and Palantir chief executives | The 2025 Summary Compensation Table value is a grant-date accounting figure. The same proxy reports compensation actually paid of $21.690 million for 2025, and $385.953 million for 2024.2026 proxy Summary Compensation Table for Adam Foroughi: $400,000 salary, a $12,558,866 stock award, no cash bonus and $10,135 of all other compensation. |
Critical evidence warning
AppLovin does not publish salary ranges, band minimums, midpoints or a global pay matrix for any employee below the named executive layer. Every non-executive figure here is a job posting, a visa wage record, a crowdsourced observation or a calibrated model around one, and should be used for orientation rather than quoted as an AppLovin pay band.
Compensation by Band — Palo Alto
Low / median / high annual values at 1.00× base and 1.00× total-compensation factors versus Palo Alto. Total equals base plus bonus plus annualized equity.
| Band | Title | Base | Variable | Total TC | Equity |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| B0 | Intern / Co-op 0–1 years · verified | $133K – $179K | — | $156K $133K – $179K | — |
| B1 | Associate / New Grad 0–2 years · reported | $132K – $178K | 3% | $218K $185K – $250K | $58K |
| B2 | Professional / Software Engineer II 2–5 years · reported | $162K – $219K | 5% | $273K $232K – $313K | $73K |
| B3 | Senior 5–8 years · reported | $185K – $250K | 5% | $358K $304K – $411K | $129K |
| B4 | Staff / Lead 8–12 years · reported | $210K – $283K | 8% | $575K $489K – $661K | $309K |
| B5 | Principal / Engineering Manager 10–15 years · modeled | $223K – $302K | 10% | $625K $531K – $719K | $336K |
| B6 | Senior Manager / Senior Principal 12–18 years · modeled | $236K – $319K | 12% | $650K $553K – $748K | $339K |
| B7 | Director / Senior Director 14–20 years · reported | $226K – $306K | 15% | $600K $510K – $690K | $294K |
| B8 | Vice President 18–24 years · modeled | $276K – $374K | 20% | $1.02M $871K – $1.18M | $635K |
| B9 | SVP / EVP / President 20+ years · modeled | $319K – $431K | 25% | $3.00M $2.55M – $3.45M | $2.53M |
| NEO | Named executive officer excluding the chief executive 20+ years · verified | $340K – $460K | — | $13.13M $11.16M – $15.10M | $12.56M |
| CEO | Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder 20+ years · verified | $340K – $460K | — | $12.97M $11.02M – $14.91M | $12.56M |
Total Compensation Range by Band
Total compensation in Palo Alto across the employee bands. Proxy-disclosed executive cohorts are excluded so the employee bands stay readable.
Global Footprint & Pay Arbitrage
AppLovin reported 898 employees across 15 countries at 31 December 2025, with roughly 60 percent outside the United States. Palo Alto is the pay anchor. The Form 10-K names facilities in Beijing, Shanghai, Berlin, Frankfurt and Singapore, public listings add San Francisco, Dublin, Herzliya, Seoul, Tokyo and Toronto, and the remaining markets are scenario benchmarks rather than verified payroll locations.
Office and market catalogue — calibration factors versus Palo Alto
| Location | Likely office profile | Presence | Base | TC |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Palo Alto United States · USD | Headquarters, engineering, product, corporate and executive centre | Disclosed principal executive offices at 1100 Page Mill Road | 1.00× | 1.00× |
San Francisco United States · USD | Bay Area engineering and go-to-market labour market | Public office listing | 1.00× | 1.00× |
New York United States · USD | Commercial, business development and advertiser-facing roles | Public job-location evidence | 0.95× | 0.95× |
Los Angeles United States · USD | Santa Monica area commercial and partnership roles | Public job-location evidence | 0.90× | 0.90× |
Toronto Canada · CAD | Business development and commercial functions | Public office listing and job postings | 0.70× | 0.70× |
Berlin Germany · EUR | Adjust product, engineering and commercial base | Adjust GmbH is a disclosed significant subsidiary; office publicly listed | 0.55× | 0.55× |
Frankfurt Germany · EUR | Secondary German facility named in the property disclosure | Named as an international facility in the FY2025 Form 10-K | 0.55× | 0.55× |
Dublin Ireland · EUR | European corporate and commercial functions | Public office listing; historical legal-entity evidence | 0.62× | 0.62× |
London United Kingdom · GBP | Comparison market for European commercial hiring | Scenario benchmark; no current material office disclosure located | 0.70× | 0.70× |
Warsaw Poland · PLN | Central European engineering comparison market | Scenario benchmark; no current material office disclosure located | 0.36× | 0.36× |
Tel Aviv Israel · ILS | Herzliya engineering and product presence | Israeli employees discussed in the Form 10-K; office publicly listed | 0.70× | 0.70× |
Beijing China · CNY | China operations, advertiser and developer coverage | Named as an international facility in the FY2025 Form 10-K | 0.42× | 0.42× |
Shanghai China · CNY | Second Chinese facility supporting the same market | Named as an international facility in the FY2025 Form 10-K | 0.42× | 0.42× |
Tokyo Japan · JPY | Japan advertiser and publisher coverage | Public office listing; historical legal-entity evidence | 0.55× | 0.55× |
Seoul South Korea · KRW | Korean gaming and advertiser coverage | Public office listing; historical legal-entity evidence | 0.48× | 0.48× |
Singapore Singapore · SGD | Southeast Asia regional hub | AppLovin (Singapore) Pte. Ltd. is a disclosed significant subsidiary | 0.60× | 0.60× |
Bangalore India · INR | Indian engineering comparison market | Scenario benchmark; no current material India office or payroll disclosure located | 0.25× | 0.25× |
Sydney Australia · AUD | Australian commercial comparison market | Scenario benchmark; no current material Australia office disclosure located | 0.68× | 0.68× |
Melbourne Australia · AUD | Secondary Australian comparison market | Scenario benchmark; no current material Australia office disclosure located | 0.65× | 0.65× |
Auckland New Zealand · NZD | New Zealand comparison market | Scenario benchmark; no current material office disclosure located | 0.55× | 0.55× |
Dubai United Arab Emirates · AED | Middle East comparison market | Scenario benchmark; no current material office disclosure located | 0.60× | 0.60× |
AppLovin discloses no city-level or country-level headcount, so this catalogue cannot rank offices by employee count. The Form 10-K names its international facilities but does not say how many people work in each, and the 2025 divestiture of the Apps business to Tripledot changed the footprint enough that pre-2025 location evidence is unreliable.
Palo Alto anchor medians — the basis of every modeled cell
| Band | Base | Stock | Bonus | Other | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| B0 | $156K | $0 | $0 | — | $156K |
| B1 | $155K | $58K | $5K | — | $218K |
| B2 | $190K | $73K | $10K | — | $273K |
| B3 | $218K | $129K | $11K | — | $358K |
| B4 | $247K | $309K | $20K | — | $575K |
| B7 | $266K | $294K | $40K | — | $600K |
| NEO | $400K | $12.56M | $0 | $174K | $13.13M |
| CEO | $400K | $12.56M | $0 | $10K | $12.97M |
- The Palo Alto column is the anchor. B1 through B4 come from Levels.fyi United States software-engineering records cross-checked against AppLovin job postings and labour condition application wages at the same worksite.
- B0 is the only row taken straight from an AppLovin document. The intern posting quotes $70 an hour for bachelor candidates and $80 an hour for master candidates, annualised here to $145,600 to $166,400.
- San Francisco carries the same factor as Palo Alto because the crowdsourced records that build the anchor are published as a single San Francisco Bay Area sample rather than split by city.
- Berlin is the strongest non-US calibration point. A Business Development Associate posting shows €53,762 to €80,091 against $105,000 to $155,000 for the same role in New York, which is about 60 percent at both ends of the range.
- The named executive rows are proxy disclosures for four specific people in Palo Alto. They are never scaled by a city factor, because doing so would invent a local executive benchmark that no filing supports.
Model rules
- Every modeled cell is the Palo Alto median multiplied by the city factor and then by the 25 August 2026 foreign-exchange snapshot. Local currency figures are pure FX translations and carry no purchasing-power adjustment.
- AppLovin's own model applies one factor to base and to total alike, so this report sets baseFactor equal to totalFactor for every city and omits any level-dependent interpolation. There is no published evidence that offshore markets compress differently at senior levels, and inventing that curve would misstate whole markets.
- Total compensation is base plus target variable plus annualised equity, with no employer benefit load added. Payroll taxes, pension and superannuation contributions, statutory bonus and benefit costs are employer cost rather than pay and are excluded from every total.
- Frankfurt and Shanghai carry the same national factor as Berlin and Beijing. They are named as facilities in the Form 10-K but no city-specific compensation observation exists for either, so they are a grade less reliable than the markets with a direct posting.
- Sign-on payments, relocation, one-time retention awards and the October 2025 engineering performance share programme are all excluded from the band totals. Including any of them would move the senior technical rows by six figures.
Variable Pay & Annual Cash Incentive
AppLovin is the rare public company that runs no annual cash bonus plan for its executive officers at all. The proxy states plainly that named executives do not participate in one and that the Compensation Committee reflects annual performance in the size of the equity award instead. For employees, no target grid, no formula and no payout history is published anywhere, so every band target below is modeled from observed bonus components.
| Band | Target | Mechanism | Recent payout |
|---|---|---|---|
B0 Intern / Co-op | 0% of base | Hourly role with no target bonus evidenced in the posting. | Not publicly disclosed |
B1 Associate / New Grad | 3% of base | Modeled target. The observed new-graduate package carries about $5,000 of bonus against a $155,000 base. | Not publicly disclosed |
B2 Professional / Software Engineer II | 5% of base | Modeled target. The observed mid-level package carries about $11,600 of bonus, or roughly 6 percent of base. | Not publicly disclosed |
B3 Senior | 5% of base | Modeled target. The two observed senior rungs report $0 and $3,750 of bonus, so cash variable pay is small and inconsistent at this level. | Not publicly disclosed |
B4 Staff / Lead | 8% of base | Modeled target. The observed staff package reports no bonus at all, with the entire variable component delivered as stock. | Not publicly disclosed |
B5 Principal / Engineering Manager | 10% of base | Modeled target. No AppLovin mechanism, cadence or weighting is published. | Not publicly disclosed |
B6 Senior Manager / Senior Principal | 12% of base | Modeled target. No AppLovin mechanism, cadence or weighting is published. | Not publicly disclosed |
B7 Director / Senior Director | 15% of base | Modeled target. Director postings say incentive compensation may apply depending on the position but publish no formula. | Not publicly disclosed |
B8 Vice President | 20% of base | Modeled target, bounded above by the fact that the layer directly above it receives no cash bonus at all. | Not publicly disclosed |
B9 SVP / EVP / President | 25% of base | Modeled target. This is the most doubtful row in the table, because the disclosed layer immediately above runs on a zero cash bonus. | Not publicly disclosed |
NEO Named executive officer excluding the chief executive | No annual cash bonus | Annual performance and impact are reflected in the size of the annual equity award rather than in a cash payout. | No cash bonus paid to any named executive in 2025 |
CEO Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder | No annual cash bonus | Annual performance and impact are reflected in the size of the annual equity award rather than in a cash payout. | No cash bonus paid to the chief executive in 2025 |
Executive incentive targets — percent of salary
Named-executive outcomes
| Executive | Target | Paid | Attainment |
|---|---|---|---|
| Adam Foroughi | $0 | $0 | No annual cash bonus programme |
| Matthew Stumpf | $0 | $0 | No annual cash bonus programme |
| Vasily Shikin | $0 | $0 | No annual cash bonus programme |
| Victoria Valenzuela | $0 | $0 | No annual cash bonus programme |
Employee payout timing and history
AppLovin publishes no bonus target grid by level, no company, business-unit or individual weighting, no rating multiplier and no payout history for any year. The FY2025 Form 10-K says the company uses base cash, equity and performance cash awards across the organisation, which supports role-dependent variable pay rather than a universal target. The percentages in this table are planning inputs derived from bonus components visible in crowdsourced packages, and those components run from $0 to $11,600 with no discernible pattern by level.
Sales and special incentives
AppLovin discloses no quota structure, commission rate, accelerator, draw arrangement or on-target earnings figure for any commercial role. Business development and sales roles in this model carry the same modeled targets as their level peers, which will understate on-target earnings for quota-carrying sellers and may understate them substantially given that crowdsourced business development totals cluster near $75,000.
Equity — RSUs, PSUs, Options & ESPP
AppLovin is a Delaware issuer listed on Nasdaq, so employee equity means restricted stock units, performance stock units and employee stock purchase plan purchases. No stock options were granted in 2024 or 2025, and the options that remain outstanding are legacy awards at a weighted-average exercise price of $6.10. Equity is the whole variable pay story at this company, not a supplement to it.
- At 31 December 2025, 2,534,802 securities were issuable under outstanding options, warrants and rights at a weighted-average exercise price of $6.10, against 108,497,897 shares available across the 2021 Plan, the Partner Plan and the employee stock purchase plan.
- The ratio of outstanding rights to outstanding-plus-available capacity is about 2.3 percent, but that is not a historical utilisation rate. It excludes every vested, exercised, settled, forfeited and repurchased award, and the 2023 performance programme alone settled more than 17 million units.
- Unrecognised stock-based compensation was about $489.0 million at the FY2025 close, expected to be recognised over a weighted-average 1.95 years. That is a short runway compared with most large technology issuers and reflects the one-year vesting used on executive awards.
- Restricted stock unit activity in 2025 was unusual: 2,150,021 units opened the year at a $74.34 weighted-average grant-date value, only 239,382 were granted but at $577.97 each, 1,629,270 vested at $88.97 and 401,971 were forfeited, leaving 358,162 at $360.48. The unit count collapsed while the value per unit rose more than sevenfold.
Equity plan capacity and grant activity
Vesting — common reported employee schedule
The FY2025 Form 10-K says employee restricted stock units generally vest over one or four years, with the individual award agreement controlling, and the four-year pattern above is the common case. Executives are on the short schedule: the 30 October 2025 named executive grant vests 25 percent quarterly beginning 20 February 2026, so it is fully vested within one year of grant. Performance stock units do not follow either schedule. They settle only when a share-price or market-capitalisation milestone is met over 30 consecutive trading days and the holder is still employed.
Eligibility by hierarchy level
- Restricted stock units reach new graduates. A United States Software Engineer I posting confirms equity eligibility at the entry level, and crowdsourced packages show roughly $55,000 of annualised stock at Software Engineer 1. What is not published is any minimum eligible level, standard grant table or guarantee that every employee receives a grant.
- Annualised stock values observed in public submissions run roughly $55,000 at Software Engineer 1, $66,600 at Software Engineer 2, $107,500 to $186,500 across the two senior rungs and $331,758 at staff. Above staff, no observation exists at all.
- The October 2025 engineering programme creates a second, invisible equity tier. It targeted a narrow set of key non-executive engineers with $300 billion to $1 trillion market-capitalisation hurdles, and nothing in the filings identifies which titles or levels qualified.
- Refresh cadence below the executive layer is not disclosed. The proxy describes an intended annual fall grant cycle for named executives covering the following service year, but there is no equivalent statement for employees.
- Directors receive equity under the non-employee director programme and are subject to an ownership guideline equal to 500 percent of the annual board cash retainer, but the current annual director award value is not published.
Indicative annual grant value by band — Palo Alto
| Band | Annual value (USD) | Median | Shares at $305.01 |
|---|---|---|---|
| B1 | $43K – $72K | $58K | ~142–237 |
| B2 | $55K – $91K | $73K | ~180–299 |
| B3 | $97K – $161K | $129K | ~318–529 |
| B4 | $232K – $386K | $309K | ~759–1,265 |
| B5 | $252K – $420K | $336K | ~827–1,378 |
| B6 | $254K – $424K | $339K | ~834–1,390 |
| B7 | $221K – $368K | $294K | ~723–1,205 |
| B8 | $476K – $794K | $635K | ~1,561–2,602 |
| B9 | $1.90M – $3.16M | $2.53M | ~6,224–10,374 |
| NEO | $9.42M – $15.70M | $12.56M | ~30,881–51,469 |
| CEO | $9.42M – $15.70M | $12.56M | ~30,881–51,469 |
Annualized planning value (±25%), not the face value of every new-hire grant. Share equivalents use the $305.01 reference price at 25 August 2026 market snapshot and ignore plan valuation rules and PSU performance. Highlighted rows are disclosed grant-date stock awards.
Named executive target equity
| Executive | Target | Units / structure |
|---|---|---|
Adam Foroughi Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder | $12,558,866 grant-date value for 2025 | 20,236 restricted stock units granted 30 October 2025, vesting 25 percent quarterly from 20 February 2026. No performance stock units were granted to him in 2025; his 6,902,000-unit 2023 performance award had fully vested by the end of 2024. |
Matthew Stumpf Chief Financial Officer | $12,558,866 grant-date value for 2025 | The identical 20,236-unit award on identical terms, which is unusual because his predecessor role and scope differ materially from the chief executive's. |
Vasily Shikin Chief Technology Officer in 2025 and Distinguished Engineer from July 2026 | $12,558,866 grant-date value for 2025 | The identical 20,236-unit award. He also held 560,400 exercisable legacy options at $5.05 expiring 15 December 2029, a position no other named executive matches. |
Victoria Valenzuela Chief Administrative and Legal Officer in 2025, retired August 2026 | $12,558,866 grant-date value for 2025 | The identical 20,236-unit award. Her December 2025 trading plan covered net shares from those same 20,236 units, and a replacement plan adopted in June 2026 covered up to 55,500 shares plus net shares from 10,118 units. |
Executive Compensation
2025 Summary Compensation Table values from the 2026 proxy statement. The striking feature is uniformity: all four named executives held a $400,000 salary, none received a cash bonus, and each received the same 20,236-unit restricted stock unit award. The only thing that varied was all other compensation.
Reading the package
Salary was about 3.1 percent of the chief executive's 2025 reported total while the single stock award was about 96.8 percent. There is no cash bonus line at all. The consequence is that the proxy total is almost entirely an accounting valuation: the same proxy reports compensation actually paid of $21.690 million for 2025, $385.953 million for 2024 and $286.889 million for 2023, against Summary Compensation Table totals of $12.969 million, $11.202 million and $83.362 million. No other figure in this report diverges from its accounting value so violently.
Peer totals are grant-date Summary Compensation Table values, not realised pay, and each issuer uses a different fiscal year, award design and median-employee methodology. On pay ratio the same peers run 217:1 at Adobe, 125:1 at The Trade Desk, 97:1 at AppLovin and 37:1 at Palantir, which says as much about each company's median employee as it does about the chief executive.
Named Executive Officers & Board
AppLovin executed a broad leadership transition through 2026. Giovanni Ge became Chief Technology Officer on 1 July 2026 as Vasily Shikin moved to Distinguished Engineer, Corina Cacovean became Chief Legal Officer on 1 August 2026 as Victoria Valenzuela retired, and Craig Billings became independent Board Chair on 2 April 2026 while Adam Foroughi remained chief executive and a director.
The Shikin transition is the most instructive item in the whole report. A sitting chief technology officer moved to a Distinguished Engineer title rather than leaving, which confirms that AppLovin maintains a senior technical individual contributor track running parallel to the executive layer. His 2025 all other compensation of $437,075 was more than fifteen times the next highest figure in the table and is not explained as a bonus. Valenzuela's retirement came with a $150,000 consulting arrangement running to 31 May 2027. Severance outside a change-in-control period is generally 12 months of base salary plus COBRA reimbursement, rising to 18 months for the chief executive; inside the change-in-control window those become 18 and 24 months plus full acceleration of qualifying equity.
Board compensation framework
| Element | Amount | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Non-employee director annual cash retainer | $50,000 | The base retainer, generally paid quarterly. Employee directors receive no director pay. |
| Board Chair | $140,000 | Increased from $60,000 effective April 2026 when Craig Billings became independent chair, more than doubling the role's retainer. |
| Lead Independent Director | $75,000 | The role is superseded by the independent chair structure where that structure applies. |
| Audit Committee | $45,000 chair / $15,000 member | Increased in 2026 from $35,000 and $10,000 respectively. |
| Compensation Committee | $35,000 chair / $12,500 member | Increased in 2026 from $30,000 and $10,000 respectively. |
| Nominating and Governance Committee | $25,000 chair / $10,000 member | No change recorded for 2026. |
| Annual equity award | Not publicly disclosed | Directors receive policy-based equity awards, but the current annual award value is not published in any reviewed source. |
| Ownership guideline | 500% of the annual board cash retainer | Directors are expected to hold equity worth five times the base cash retainer. |
Directors may elect equity in lieu of cash subject to policy terms. Because the annual equity award value is not disclosed, no total director compensation figure can be stated here, and this report deliberately shows no director band rather than modelling one.
Regional heads and other officers
Giovanni Ge and Corina Cacovean had no full-year Summary Compensation Table at the report date, so their pay is visible only through Section 16 filings. Cacovean's first visible transaction was a 20 August 2026 tax withholding of 1,540 shares, which confirms she already holds vesting equity. Vice presidents, directors and every layer below them have no compensation disclosure of any kind, which is the single largest evidence gap in this report.
Insider Trades — SEC Forms 3/4/5
AppLovin is a Delaware issuer listed on Nasdaq, so the governing record is SEC Forms 3, 4, 5 and 144. Indian promoter-group, SEBI SAST, BSE and NSE designated-person and employee stock ownership trust filings are not applicable. Form 4 transaction code F is issuer withholding for tax and is not an insider cash sale, and a Form 144 is a notice of proposed sale rather than evidence that a sale completed.
| Date | Person | Transaction | Shares | Price | Value |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-08-20 | Corina Cacovean Chief Legal Officer | Withholding Shares surrendered to cover tax on a restricted stock unit settlement. Not an open-market sale. | 1,540 | $308.77 | $476K |
| 2026-06-11 | Adam Foroughi Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder | Sale Form 144 notice of proposed sale. This is an intention, not a completed transaction, and should not be aggregated with executed sales. | 41,666 | $484.75 | $20.20M |
| 2026-06-10 | JAF Children's Trust Trust for the chief executive's children with a beneficial-ownership disclaimer | Sale Completed open-market sale with gross proceeds shown. A separate 16,667-share bona fide gift by the chief executive was filed the same day at zero proceeds. | 20,833 | $503.91 | $10.50M |
| 2026-06-04 | Victoria Valenzuela Chief Administrative and Legal Officer and Corporate Secretary | Sale Completed open-market sale across weighted-average lots from $555.63 to $586.49. The price shown is the aggregate weighted average, not an SEC-supplied figure. | 20,000 | $565.89 | $11.32M |
| 2026-05-28 | Matthew Stumpf Chief Financial Officer | Sale Completed at exactly $600 per share under a Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. | 9,052 | $600.00 | $5.43M |
| 2026-05-22 | Vasily Shikin Chief Technology Officer at the time; Distinguished Engineer from July 2026 | Sale The largest single completed disposal in the reviewed window, disclosed through Form 144 sale history. | 89,720 | $485.02 | $43.52M |
| 2026-05-20 | Matthew Stumpf Chief Financial Officer | Withholding Issuer withholding for restricted stock unit tax. The same filing notes 44 shares acquired through the employee stock purchase plan. | 2,341 | $482.28 | $1.13M |
| 2026-03-12 | Adam Foroughi Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder | Sale Completed open-market sale on the second consecutive day of a 100,000-share programme. | 50,000 | $458.23 | $22.91M |
| 2026-03-11 | Adam Foroughi Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder | Sale Completed open-market sale disclosed in later Form 144 sale history. | 50,000 | $466.04 | $23.30M |
| 2026-03-10 | Vasily Shikin Chief Technology Officer at the time | Sale Completed open-market sale reported on Form 4, an order of magnitude smaller than his May disposal. | 5,817 | $474.78 | $2.76M |
Reading guide
Benefits & Perks
AppLovin publishes benefits at the level of a careers page rather than a country rewards portal, and it states explicitly that benefits vary by region and employment status. The United States picture is reasonably well evidenced through the proxy and job postings. Everywhere else, the honest answer is that plan design is not published, so this section shows statutory baselines clearly labelled as such rather than dressing them up as AppLovin policy.
United States
- Medical — 100 percent company-paid health coverage for employees and dependents. AppLovin states that it pays the full premium for employee and dependent health coverage. Carrier names, plan options, employer premium percentage by plan and any health savings account contribution are not published. [official]
- Retirement — 401(k) match of 100 percent on the first 1 percent plus 50 percent on the next 5 percent. A maximum company match of 3.5 percent of annual income, fully vested at the point of contribution. This is a disclosed formula rather than a posting inference. [official]
- Protection — Dental, vision, life, short-term and long-term disability cover. Listed in United States job postings and careers materials. Individual benefit limits and employee contributions are not published. [official]
- Leave — Flexible or unlimited paid time off. United States postings describe flexible time off, and one posting specifies 10 paid holidays and 80 hours of sick leave. Entitlement therefore depends on state law and employee category rather than a single company policy. [reported]
- Family — Parental leave plus family-planning and reproductive-health support. Both appear in careers materials. Leave duration, top-up percentage and eligibility service thresholds are not disclosed for any market. [official]
- Equity — Employee stock purchase plan at a 15 percent discount. Up to 15 percent of eligible compensation, 24-month offerings, six-month purchases at 85 percent of the lower of the offering and purchase price, with a 3,500-share cap per purchase period. [official]
Global programs
- Equity — Restricted stock units, performance stock units and the employee stock purchase plan. Available to eligible employees under the 2021 Plan and the 2021 employee stock purchase plan, subject to local availability. Equity is the dominant variable pay instrument at every level from new graduate upward. [official]
- Wellness — Mental health and wellbeing support plus employee events. Named on the careers page for all markets. No vendor, session limit or reimbursement value is published. [official]
- Allowance — Phone bill reimbursement for business use. A rare AppLovin allowance that is stated globally rather than by market. The reimbursement amount is not disclosed. [official]
- Work model — Flexible hybrid profile with team-level variation. Public office profiles describe flexible hybrid working, but AppLovin publishes no company-wide office attendance requirement and states that local team practice may vary. [reported]
- Scope — Benefits vary by region and employment status. This is AppLovin's own wording. It is the reason no single global benefit table can be constructed from public sources, and it should be read as a warning against assuming the United States package applies anywhere else. [official]
Benefit fields not publicly quantified
Health plan carrier names, employer premium percentage by plan, health savings account contributions, commuter allowance amounts, leave day caps beyond posting disclosures, learning platform vendors, certification reimbursement, sabbatical policy, formal rotation programmes and employee assistance vendors are not publicly disclosed in any market. For every country other than the United States, AppLovin's own plan design is unknown, and the statutory rows above are law rather than company benefits.
Performance Review & Pay Progression
AppLovin publishes nothing about how it reviews or pays for performance below the executive layer. There is no rating scale, no calibration description, no merit matrix and no review calendar in any filing, careers page or posting reviewed for this report. What the proxy does say is that the Compensation Committee evaluates annual performance and impact when sizing the annual equity award for named executives, which is the entire disclosed performance-to-pay mechanism at this company.
Not publicly disclosed
Modeled promotion planning timeline
| Band | Years to next scope | Promotion hike | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| B0 | 3 months to 1 year to a B1 conversion offer | Not disclosed | Modeled planning interval |
| B1 | 1–3 years to B2 | Not disclosed | Modeled planning interval |
| B2 | 2–4 years to B3 | Not disclosed | Modeled planning interval |
| B3 | 2–4 years to B4 | Not disclosed | Modeled planning interval |
| B4 | 3–5 years to B5 | Not disclosed | Modeled planning interval |
| B5 | 3–5 years to B6 | Not disclosed | Modeled planning interval |
| B6 | 3–6 years to B7 | Not disclosed | Modeled planning interval |
| B7 | 3–7 years to B8 | Not disclosed | Modeled planning interval |
| B8 | 3–8 years to B9 | Not disclosed | Modeled planning interval |
| B9 | Board and market determined | Not disclosed | Modeled planning interval |
| NEO | Board appointment | Not disclosed | Modeled planning interval |
| CEO | Founder and board appointment | Not disclosed | Modeled planning interval |
The only disclosed calendar item is the executive equity cycle. The 2026 proxy describes an intended annual grant in the fall covering the following service year, and the 30 October 2025 award vesting quarterly from 20 February 2026 fits that pattern. For employees, the review month, hike percentage, mid-year correction policy and off-cycle cadence are all unpublished, and careers materials that emphasise product focus, high standards, candour and speed should not be converted into a rating taxonomy.
Pay progression evidence
Modeled progression, not AppLovin policy: B0 to B1 takes 3 months to a year for a 10 to 20 percent increase; B1 to B2 takes 1 to 3 years for 10 to 18 percent; B2 to B3 takes 2 to 4 years for 12 to 22 percent; B3 to B4 takes 2 to 4 years for 15 to 30 percent; B4 to B5 and B5 to B6 each take 3 to 5 years for 12 to 25 percent; B6 to B7 takes 3 to 6 years for 15 to 30 percent; B7 to B8 takes 3 to 7 years for 15 to 40 percent; and B8 to B9 takes 3 to 8 years for 20 to 75 percent. These are market heuristics. At AppLovin specifically the cash figure is the wrong thing to watch, because observed total compensation roughly doubles between the senior and staff rungs almost entirely through equity, so an equity refresh matters far more than a salary increase.
H-1B / LCA Visa Footprint — United States
AppLovin is a small, concentrated H-1B sponsor. Filings run in the tens rather than the hundreds and cluster heavily at the Palo Alto headquarters in technical roles. Labour condition application wages are guaranteed base salary only, so they exclude restricted stock units, performance stock units, employee stock purchase plan value and bonus, and at senior technical levels that exclusion hides more than half of the package.
Dataset summary
| Dataset | Result | Interpretation |
|---|---|---|
| H1BGrader FY2026 distribution | 35 labour condition applications, $187,741 median and $192,841 mean | Also reports the wage-level split: 2 filings at Level I, 10 at Level II, 9 at Level III and 14 at Level IV, so 40 percent of the FY2026 set sits at the most senior wage level. |
| H1BGrader FY2022 to FY2026 certified set | 128 certified applications with a $140,000 25th percentile, $177,000 median and $213,000 75th percentile | The multi-year view runs well below the FY2026 view, which shows how quickly AppLovin's sponsored base salaries have risen. |
| MyVisaJobs FY2025 employer profile | 29 labour condition applications at a $191,694 average proffered base | An average rather than a median. The same source reports $181,409 for FY2024 and $171,229 for FY2023. |
| H1BData Palo Alto, all years | 96 records with a $175,000 median at the headquarters worksite | A city-filtered historical view rather than a fiscal-year cohort, which is why its median sits below the FY2026 figure. |
| Ellis location aggregate, April 2026 | Role counts of 12 Software Engineer II, 9 Software Engineer and 7 Senior Software Engineer positions | Last refreshed in April 2026, so it does not capture later FY2026 filings and its counts differ from H1BGrader's. |
City-level H-1B wage history
| City | P25 | Median | P75 | Records |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Palo Alto, CA All-years aggregate. The bounds shown are the disclosed minimum and maximum, not quartiles. | $79K | $175,000 | $308K | 105 |
San Francisco, CA All-years aggregate with disclosed bounds. A separate source reports a $190,000 median on a three-record sample. | $55K | $90,000 | $210K | 15 |
Seattle, WA Small sample; bounds are the disclosed minimum and maximum. | $165K | $190,080 | $220K | 3 |
New York, NY Two-record sample; bounds are the disclosed minimum and maximum. Commercial rather than engineering roles. | $110K | $123,250 | $137K | 2 |
Austin, TX Two-record sample with no distribution published, so the single reported median is shown across all three columns. | $170K | $170,000 | $170K | 2 |
Los Angeles, CA One record only, so there is no distribution to report. | $110K | $110,000 | $110K | 1 |
All-years aggregates. P25/P75 are rounded reconstruction values marked modeled; medians and record counts are the stronger fields.
Selected title / worksite records
| Title | Worksite | Proffered wage | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Senior Machine Learning Engineer | Palo Alto, CA | $276,250 | A 2026 filing against a Level IV prevailing wage of $275,850, so the offer clears the prevailing wage by $400. |
| Senior Software Engineer | Palo Alto, CA | $220,000 median | Seven FY2026 positions running from $184,080 to $242,190. A separate FY2025 view shows a $225,000 median on three records. |
| Software Engineer II | Palo Alto, CA | $185,000 median | Five FY2025 records. A 2026 role snapshot shows 12 positions from $150,000 to $250,000 with a $165,000 median. |
| Software Engineer | Palo Alto, CA | $175,000 median | Nine positions running from $102,107 to $200,000, which is the widest spread of any single title in the dataset. |
| Operations Engineer | Palo Alto, CA | $145,000 median | A small multi-year sample and the lowest-paid technical title observed in AppLovin's filings. |
Reading the data correctly
- A labour condition application is a wage filing, not an approved or issued visa. Certification says the employer attested to the wage, nothing more.
- The salary field is guaranteed base wage. It excludes restricted stock units, performance stock units, employee stock purchase plan value, bonus, sign-on and benefits, and at AppLovin the stock component can exceed the base at staff level.
- Aggregators deduplicate and classify filings differently, which is why FY2026 counts of 29, 35 and 37 all appear in the sources for the same period. Each figure carries its own refresh date and they cannot be merged.
- Certification rate and petition approval rate are different metrics measured by different agencies. Combining a 100 percent Department of Labor certification rate with a 96.3 percent United States Citizenship and Immigration Services approval rate produces a meaningless number.
- The city table mixes fiscal-year cohorts with all-years aggregates, and several rows rest on one or two records. Only the Palo Alto row has enough volume to be treated as a distribution rather than an anecdote.
Key Nuances & Insights
All four 2025 named executives held a $400,000 base salary, unchanged from 2024, and none received an annual cash bonus. AppLovin is one of very few large public issuers with no executive annual cash incentive plan at all. The economic upside sits entirely in equity, which means an executive's bad year shows up as a smaller future grant rather than a missed payout.
The chief executive, chief financial officer, chief technology officer and chief administrative and legal officer each received exactly 20,236 restricted stock units on 30 October 2025 with the same $12,558,866 grant-date value. Role differentiation appeared only in prior holdings and in all other compensation, not in the annual award.
The October 2025 programme granted 920,526 performance stock units worth $410.5 million at grant to certain key non-executive engineering employees, on hurdles running from a $300 billion market capitalisation up to $1 trillion over seven years. Nothing in the filings says which titles qualified, so a narrow technical cohort may hold equity far above anything in this report's band table.
The chief executive's 2025 Summary Compensation Table total was $12.969 million while compensation actually paid under the SEC's own measure was $21.690 million. For 2024 the same two figures were $11.202 million and $385.953 million. No other number in this report is so sensitive to which valuation convention you pick.
A United States Software Engineer I posting confirms equity eligibility, and crowdsourced entry packages carry about $55,000 of annualised stock. That is evidence of broad participation, not proof of a universal entitlement, because AppLovin publishes no minimum eligible level and no standard grant table.
A Software Engineer II posting differentiates $157,000 to $207,000 in California, New York and Washington from $133,000 to $176,000 in other states. That is a roughly 18 percent spread inside the United States alone, and it is the only geographic pay rule AppLovin has actually published.
AppLovin reports employees in 15 countries with roughly 60 percent outside the United States, yet it discloses no country headcount, no local pay data and no local benefit design. Every non-United States figure in this report is a model built on one Berlin posting and one Toronto posting.
No current material India or Australia office, entity or payroll evidence was located in either bundle. Those sections carry statutory baselines labelled as law rather than invented AppLovin bands, and their location factors should be read as scenario benchmarks only.
Employees went from 1,563 at the end of 2024 to 898 at the end of 2025, but the Apps business was sold to Tripledot on 30 June 2025 for $400 million in cash plus roughly 20 percent of Tripledot's equity. Revenue per employee rises sharply on that arithmetic and it is not organic productivity.
Of the ten transactions in this report, two are issuer tax withholding, one is a Form 144 notice of proposed sale and one is a trust disposal with a beneficial-ownership disclaimer. A bona fide gift of 16,667 shares also sits in the same window at zero proceeds. Aggregating all of these as insider selling would overstate executed disposals by more than $20 million.
Research control
Against its closest disclosed peers AppLovin sits low on chief executive pay and low on pay ratio: $12.97 million and 97:1, against $27.43 million and 125:1 at The Trade Desk, $51.17 million and 217:1 at Adobe, $10.57 million at Unity, $8.62 million and 37:1 at Palantir and $5.84 million at Magnite. That looks restrained until you notice the structure. AppLovin's executives take no cash bonus at all, so the entire comparison rests on how one accounting convention values one restricted stock unit grant. On employee pay the position reverses: observed staff engineering total compensation of about $574,000 and a senior range of $335,000 to $392,000 sit at or above what large diversified software peers pay at the same scope, and the median employee figure of $133,808 is low only because it is a global median spanning 15 countries.
Evidence classification
| Label | Meaning | Examples and permitted use |
|---|---|---|
| official | An AppLovin SEC filing, careers or benefits page, an AppLovin job posting, or a government rule such as a statutory contribution rate. | May be treated as disclosed fact for the stated date. Executive pay, equity plan mechanics, headcount, revenue, the 401(k) formula and statutory floors all sit here. |
| reported | Employee-submitted pay, a labour condition application wage or a third-party salary record such as Levels.fyi or Glassdoor. | Useful market evidence with real sample and classification limits. Most of the B1 to B4 and B7 rows rest on this class. |
| modeled | The Palo Alto anchor multiplied by a city calibration factor and a foreign-exchange rate, or an interpolation between two observed levels. | Scenario planning only. Never present a modeled cell as an AppLovin offer, policy or band, and treat every non-United States figure as modeled by default. |
| npd | No reliable public evidence was located. | Preserved as an explicit unknown. This report does not backfill a missing value with a generic market estimate. |
Explicit “Not publicly disclosed” index
Known gaps and diligence before relying on a cell
- 1The two bundles use different reference share prices, $305.01 at 25 August 2026 and $298.59 at 24 August 2026. This report uses $305.01 because it matches the foreign-exchange snapshot used for every conversion here. Any share-equivalent figure moves about 2 percent between the two.
- 2The two bundles use different foreign-exchange snapshots. This report standardises on the 25 August 2026 set, which covers all fourteen currencies used by the location table; the alternative snapshot differs by less than half a percent on every pair.
- 3The FY2026 H-1B median is reported three ways by the same publisher and its peers: $190,000 in the sponsor summary, $187,741 in the distribution table and $191,694 as a FY2025 average elsewhere. The key metric here uses $190,000 and the H-1B section uses $187,741, and both are labelled.
- 4FY2026 labour condition application counts differ across sources at 29, 35 and 37 filings for the same period. This is a refresh-date artefact and the counts cannot be merged.
- 5The two bundles report Vasily Shikin's 22 May 2026 activity differently, as an 89,720-share disposal at $485.02 in Form 144 sale history and as a 588-share sale at $477.71 on Form 4. This report carries the larger disposal and omits the smaller one rather than double-counting the same day.
- 6Frankfurt and Shanghai appear as named facilities in the FY2025 Form 10-K but carry no city-specific pay observation. They inherit the Berlin and Beijing national factors, which makes them the two least reliable rows in the location table.
- 7One bundle treats Dublin, Tel Aviv, Tokyo and Seoul as observed offices with calibration factors; the other treats the same cities as historical legal-entity evidence with no verified current office. This report keeps them with their factors and flags them as observed rather than reported.
- 8AppLovin discloses no geographic revenue split in any reviewed source, so no regional revenue panel is shown rather than repurposing one.
- 9No employer benefit load is added to any total in this report. Base plus target variable plus annualised equity reconciles to the total for every band, and employer-side costs such as the 401(k) match, superannuation guarantee and Provident Fund contributions are excluded because they are employer cost rather than pay.
- 10No independent director band row is shown. Cash retainers are disclosed by role but the annual director equity award value is not, so a total director package would have required inventing the largest component.
- 11No company-wide 2025 or 2026 merit hike percentage, salary freeze, salary cut, campus offer revision or attrition rate was located in any source, and AppLovin does not report an attrition metric at all.
FX rates used — 1 USD equals, snapshot 2026-08-25
Single-date conversion layer for comparability; it ignores payroll-date FX, tax, purchasing power, benefits valuation and hedging. Compensation intelligence, not legal, tax, investment, immigration or employment advice.
Source register — 13 sources
| 10-K FY2025 | AppLovin Corporation Annual Report on Form 10-K for FY2025 · United States Securities and Exchange Commission · 2026-02-19. Headcount, country count, workforce split, revenue, stock-based compensation, equity plan balances, restricted stock unit and performance stock unit activity, employee stock purchase plan mechanics, property footprint, significant subsidiaries and workforce composition. |
| DEF 14A 2026 | AppLovin 2026 Definitive Proxy Statement · United States Securities and Exchange Commission · 2026-04-20. Named executive compensation, the absence of an executive cash bonus programme, the 2025 restricted stock unit grant, pay ratio, compensation actually paid, director retainers, ownership guidelines and severance terms. |
| 10-Q Q2 FY2026 | AppLovin Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the second quarter of FY2026 · United States Securities and Exchange Commission · 2026-06-30. Quarterly revenue, net income, cash flow and Rule 10b5-1 trading plan adoptions and terminations. |
| 8-K Apr 2026 | AppLovin leadership succession and independent chair Form 8-K · United States Securities and Exchange Commission · 2026-04-02. The chief technology officer and chief legal officer transitions, the Distinguished Engineer appointment, the board chair change and the retirement consulting arrangement. |
| Forms 4 and 144 | Section 16 filings for AppLovin insiders · United States Securities and Exchange Commission · 2026-08-20. Restricted stock unit tax withholding, open-market sales, gifts, trust disposals and notices of proposed sale. |
| AppLovin Careers | AppLovin careers, benefits and culture pages · AppLovin Corporation · 2026-08-25. United States medical, protection, family, wellness and phone reimbursement benefits, the hybrid work profile and the statement that benefits vary by region. |
| Job postings | AppLovin job postings for intern, new graduate, engineer, architect, product and director roles · AppLovin Corporation via public job boards · 2026-08-25. The intern hourly rate, the new-graduate base band and equity eligibility, United States geographic pay zoning, the director base band and the New York and Berlin business development comparison. |
| Levels.fyi | AppLovin software engineering and role compensation records · Levels.fyi · 2026-08-25. The five observed engineering rungs and their base, stock and bonus splits, plus role medians for management, data, product and commercial families. |
| Glassdoor | AppLovin employee-reported salary ranges · Glassdoor · 2026-08-25. An independent boundary check on the engineering, product and analyst ranges used in the band table. |
| H1BGrader | AppLovin Corporation labour condition application distributions · H1BGrader · 2026-08-25. FY2026 and FY2022 to FY2026 wage distributions, wage-level splits and certification rates. |
| MyVisaJobs and H1BData | AppLovin visa sponsorship profiles and city-filtered records · MyVisaJobs, H1BData and Ellis · 2026-08-25. Fiscal-year averages, petition approval and denial counts, role-level medians and worksite city aggregates. |
| Statutory sources | Indian and Australian statutory contribution and leave rules · Employees' Provident Fund Organisation, India Ministry of Labour, Australian Taxation Office and Fair Work Ombudsman · 2026-08-25. Provident Fund, gratuity and maternity baselines for India and superannuation, annual leave, sick leave and parental leave baselines for Australia. |
| FX snapshot | Foreign-exchange reference rates for fourteen currencies · XE, European Central Bank and Bank of Israel · 2026-08-25. The single conversion snapshot applied to every local-currency figure in this report. |
Recent News & Workforce Trend
AppLovin's 2026 has been shaped by a full leadership turnover and a heavy insider trading window rather than by any compensation announcement. No company-wide salary action was disclosed in any reviewed source, despite Q2 revenue of $1.924 billion and net income of $1.267 billion.
The two-year fall from 1,745 to 898 is not a layoff story. AppLovin sold its Apps business to Tripledot on 30 June 2025 for $400 million in cash plus roughly a 20 percent fully diluted equity interest, which removed an entire operating segment and its people from the count. Because AppLovin publishes no country headcount and does not report an attrition metric, there is no way to separate organic churn from the divestiture, and any revenue-per-employee comparison across 2024 and 2025 is structurally misleading.
Corina Cacovean had 1,540 shares withheld at $308.77 to cover restricted stock unit tax, confirming she already holds vesting equity weeks into the role. This is issuer withholding, not an open-market sale.
Net income was $1.267 billion, adjusted EBITDA $1.614 billion and free cash flow $863.3 million, taking six-month revenue to $3.766 billion. No company-wide salary action accompanied the results.
Corina Cacovean became Chief Legal Officer as Victoria Valenzuela retired and entered a consulting arrangement worth $150,000 running through 31 May 2027. The named executive population will change materially in the next proxy.
Giovanni Ge became Chief Technology Officer while Vasily Shikin moved to Distinguished Engineer, the clearest public evidence that AppLovin maintains a senior technical individual contributor track alongside the executive layer.
Completed disposals by the chief executive, the then chief technology officer, the chief financial officer and the chief administrative and legal officer cluster between March and June 2026 at prices from about $458 to $600 a share, alongside trading plan resets.
The chair retainer rose from $60,000 to $140,000 with the change, and audit, compensation and governance committee retainers were increased at the same time. Adam Foroughi remained chief executive and a director.
Headcount fell 42.5 percent on the divestiture while equity expense stayed material. Unrecognised stock compensation of about $489.0 million remained, over a weighted-average 1.95 years.
Each received 20,236 restricted stock units with a $12,558,866 grant-date fair value, vesting 25 percent quarterly from 20 February 2026. No cash bonus was paid to any of them for the year.
920,526 units were granted to certain key non-executive engineering employees on an initial $300 billion market-capitalisation hurdle, with some awards carrying milestones up to $1 trillion measurable over seven years.
AppLovin received $400 million in cash plus roughly a 20 percent fully diluted equity interest. The transaction removed an operating segment and makes 2024 to 2025 workforce comparisons structurally non-comparable.