Tripledot Studios announced the acquisition of AppLovin’s mobile games studio portfolio for approximately $800 million.
- The half-cash, half-equity deal will see AppLovin become a minority shareholder in Tripledot Studios while allowing Tripledot to expand its footprint in key strategic markets, including the US and Asia.
- As a result of this deal and subject to its closing, Tripledot Studios will operate a total of 12 studios with more than 2,500 team members across 23 cities globally.
- Tripledot will have over 25 million daily active users and annual gross revenues of nearly $2 billion, making it one of the top five independent mobile game studios globally by revenue.
Founded in London in 2017 by gaming industry veterans Lior Shiff, Akin Babayigit and Eyal Chameides, Tripledot Studios is one of the world’s largest casual games developers. Tripledot Studios has developed and operates over 25 live games, including hit titles like Woodoku, Solitaire.com, Nut Sort and Triple Tile, and has been profitable from its second year of operation. In 2023 Tripledot was named as the fastest growing company in Europe by the Financial Times.
“Creating and operating games is our passion. Our mission is to become the world’s most successful mobile game studio. Acquiring AppLovin’s games portfolio is a big step towards achieving that goal, taking us from being a high-performing challenger to a true global leader. It gives us additional scale, diversification, and access to the best talent globally. We’re thrilled to welcome these incredible teams to Tripledot.”
Lior Shiff, Co-Founder and CEO of Tripledot Studios
What a day!
Akin Babayigit, Co-founder & Board Member of Tripledot Studios
When we started Tripledot 8 years ago, sitting in a small office in Camden, and working on our first game, the magnitude of our aspirations stood in contrast to our meager surroundings; a few desks and a few laptops, building a Solitaire game to compete with the thousands of others in the market (many people later told me that they thought we had lost the plot).
Fast forward to today; we announced our acquisition of AppLovin‘s games business, making Tripledot Studios one of the largest mobile gaming companies in the world, with revenues of nearly $2Bn, DAU of 25 million, and 2500 team members. As a result of this transformative deal, the combined business will be one of the most successful multi-genre games businesses, and the most diversified gaming platform in the world.
Proud doesn’t even begin to describe my feelings. A huge thank you to all the Tripledot team, our investors, our players, and of course to the one and only Adam Foroughi and the AppLovin team for believing in Tripledot to be the new home for such an incredible set of businesses. And finally a HUGE “Welcome Aboard” to all the studios joining the Tripledot rocketship!
PS: In keeping with the theme of posting earlier pictures of ‘how it all started’, here are a couple pictures of Lior, Eyal, and myself from the very early days of Tripledot. Eyal wasn’t too happy with what was happening in the first picture 🙂
“Seven years ago, we began acquiring gaming studios to help train our earliest machine learning models.
However, we’ve never been a game developer at heart. We have immense respect for the creativity it takes to build games, including from teams in our studios.
Today, we’re announcing we’ve finalized a deal to sell all of our Apps business to Tripledot Studios. I have watched Lior build his company from the ground up and I have immense respect for his and the Tripledot team’s ability to run a games company.
Lior and his team are some of the best operators in the business and give me incredible confidence they are the right partner to help these studios thrive going forward.”
Adam Foroughi, Co-founder and CEO of AppLovin,
Tripledot Studios currently has offices in London, Warsaw, Minsk, Barcelona, Jakarta and Melbourne. They will be acquiring the following 10 studios and popular titles in an additional 17 cities across the North America, Europe and Asia.
- Lion Studios – makers of Hexa Sort, Wordle! and Found It
- PeopleFun – makers of Wordscapes, Wordscapes Solitaire and Bricks n Balls
- Belka Games – makers of Clockmaker and Train of Hope
- Zenlife Games – makers of Cooking Madness and Word Connect
- Leyi – makers of West Game and Mecha Fire
- Magic Tavern – makers of Project Makeover, Matchington Mansion and Modern Community
- Athena Studio – makers of Woody Block Puzzle and Woody 99
- Clipwire Games – makers of The Price is Right Bingo, Bingo Story and Monopoly Bingo
- Zeroo Gravity – makers of Cash Tornado, Jackpot Masters Slots and Carnival Tycoon
- Machine Zone – makers of Mobile Strike and Game of War
The acquisition is expected to close by early summer 2025, pending regulatory approvals. Raine Group acted as the lead financial advisor, together with BofA Securities, and Latham & Watkins acted as the legal counsel for Tripledot Studios. Aream & Co acted as the financial advisor and Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati acted as the legal counsel for AppLovin.
