How a national-security review made AppLovin America’s hottest stock — and its founders billionaires

In 2016, Adam Foroughi agreed to sell a majority interest in the California-based mobile-advertising company he co-founded, AppLovin, to China’s Orient Hontai Capital for $1.4 billion. Foroughi and his two AppLovin co-founders had built the company in five years with just $4 million raised from angel investors, according to the

press release that announced the deal. A nice payday seemed to have arrived. 

Then Washington intervened. An obscure and powerful federal government panel called the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S, or CFIUS, put the brakes on the AppLovin sale in 2017, citing national-security concerns.