Key insights
- Liftoff Mobile's IPO on Nasdaq, raising $437 million, is being compared to AppLovin. The company highlighted its AI engine 'Cortex' and a decade of sequential growth, suggesting a strengthening market for tech IPOs. While not a direct market mover, successful tech IPOs can indicate investor appetite for growth stocks and AI-related technologies, potentially offering a positive signal for the broader tech sector.
Liftoff Mobile (LFTO) debuted on the Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) on Thursday, raising $437 million and pricing the initial public offering (IPO) at $23 per share.
Liftoff CEO Jeremy Bondy joins Yahoo Finance to explain why the IPO was delayed, discuss Liftoff's AI engine "Cortex," and to outline the differences between Liftoff and AppLovin (APP).
You all actually had postponed the IPO earlier this year. So what what what changed? Why why why make the public debut now?
We had a a really strong start to a road show in late January and the the momentum was was very powerful.
Uh we were coming off of nine consecutive quarters of growth. Uh and then we had uh two, three Sigma days across a four-day period and the market looked pretty choppy.
And we had the benefit of being able to make a choice.
We went back home, uh grew another quarter, now at 10 sequential quarters averaging 8% growth. Uh and the investor enthusiasm had started to really build, the market has started to strengthen.
You actually developed your own AI engine called Cortex. Can you explain just uh what that is and what that does in simple terms?
So, we moved from the the previous paradigm of decision making of which ad to show and how to price that ad was based on what we call linear regression.
By moving to neural nets, your model or your brain size gets 20 times bigger.
The models that meta's recommendation engine is built on, for instance, these are neural net backed or AI backed. Um, bigger brain, faster decisioning, uh easier to extend upon, more extensible.
Um and so for a recommendation engine that's identifying ads like like our business, it's extraordinarily powerful.
I see you sometimes compared to AppLovin, and I'm just curious how you think about that.
Liftoff operates alongside App in this mobile app economy that is giant.
Um now, we're different in a few ways. We were built day one to approach the entire app economy.
From fitness to finance, to social, to prediction markets like the Knicks game last night, um or the World Cup, to sports books, to gaming as well. We've we've been built for this entire expansion into the app ecosystem.
And that approach is differentiated from the remainder of the players across the ecosystem. But I think it's really important to to appreciate the space that we're operating in.
The the mobile app economy has the least density of advertising dollars per user hour of any screen.
7 cents per user hour. So this is 1/6th the density of TV.
So, we need multiple models like Apple 11 Zaxon, Liftoff's Cortex, and a variety of others to build the density in this market that it deserves.
The mobile phone is where we spend our time.