AppLovin boss Adam Foroughi has hit back at some wild claims about his company after two reports from short sellers sent the stock tumbling.
In a blog post AppLovin CEO Adam Foroughi described the short sellers’ behaviour as “nefarious”, and their claims “misleading”.
“The reports are littered with inaccuracies and false assertions”, he continued, and countered many of the reports’ bold claims around AppLovin’s current business practices and its incoming ecommerce drive.
Short sellers Culper Research and Fuzzy Panda Research seemingly coordinated the publication of their reports for maximum impact, and it worked – AppLovin’s share price dropped from around $383 on February 25 to a low of $311 today, February 26, as the reports circulated.
Both reports contain some outlandish claims. The Culper report alleges that AppLovin is engaged in “the systematic exploitation of app permissions that enable advertisements themselves to force-feed silent, backdoor app installations directly onto users’ phones”.
Culper Research also cast doubt on AppLovin’s push into ecommerce, which appears to be its next big target after dominating mobile game UA.
The Fuzzy Panda research is similarly incendiary. It alleges that AppLovin is engaged in ad fraud, is stealing data from Meta for its ecommerce push and exploiting customer data in ways that violate Apple and Google’s store policies.
AppLovin stock had been rising steadily throughout mid-2024, and spiked dramatically in October and early February 2025 off the back of stellar earnings reports and a much-hyped move into the wider ecommerce space.
As we reported last week, AppLovin announced that it is selling its 10 game development studios to an as-yet unidentified buyer for $900m. Speculation continues to swirl around which company that might be, but we’ll find out in the coming quarter, AppLovin has said.
