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Vol. II — No. 184Remarkable People · Exceptional CompaniesToday's Edition

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Company
The Billion-Dollar Company That Disappeared into an Ad Auction
Media · Gaming · Enterprise

The Billion-Dollar Company That Disappeared into an Ad Auction

MoPub made rival ad buyers compete for space inside mobile apps. Then AppLovin paid $1.05 billion for the business and gave its customers 90 days to move to MAX.

mopub · applovinRead →
Legend
Jim Payne
Founder · Investor · Executive

Jim Payne

Jim Payne is the co-founder and CEO of CloudX, an AI-native mobile advertising platform that treats ad monetization like code and hands the busywork to autonomous agents. An MIT-trained computer scientist and former Google product manager, he built MoPub (sold to Twitter in 2013) and MAX (acquired by AppLovin), two products that shaped how apps make money. After years investing through his firm Breakpoint Capital, he returned to building in 2025, launching CloudX with a $30M Series A led by Addition to rewire the mobile ad stack for the AI era.

jim-payne · cloudxRead →