Meet the 'reclusive' tech billionaire making an audacious bid to buy TikTok

AppLovin CEO Adam Foroughi.

AppLovin

• AppLovin is in the mix to buy TikTok and save the vertical video app from a US ban.
• Adam Foroughi, AppLovin's founder, is an uncharacteristically low-key tech billionaire.
• Foroughi's getting used to the spotlight as the $100 billion-plus company makes its biggest bet yet.

Adam Foroughi tends to eschew the typical trappings of a billionaire.

He has one car, and would rather it were self-driving. He rarely appears on TV or conference stages. In his downtime, you're more likely to find him at home with his five children than schmoozing on the slopes of Davos. People who know him point to his mild manner and lack of ego.

His advertising technology company, AppLovin, is similarly unflashy. With an ad network that reaches around a billion daily users and a market cap more than twice that of Snap, Pinterest, and Reddit combined, it was the technology behemoth you'd never heard of.

"We're a $100 billion-plus company, not many people know of us, so that's probably a flaw on me," Foroughi told Business Insider in an interview.

Then came April.

Ahead of a June 19 deadline, AppLovin and Foroughi, 45, made a last-minute bid to acquire the international assets of TikTok as the Chinese-owned company faces a potential ban in the US.

It's an audacious move for any company, let alone one with a founder who usually goes out of his way to avoid the spotlight.

It faces an uphill battle. Competition is fierce. President Donald Trump has said he's been negotiating with multiple potential buyers. Investors like Kevin O'Leary of "Shark Tank" fame and former Dodgers owner Frank McCourt have signaled interest, and other tech companies are in the mix.

At AppLovin, Foroughi is known for running a ruthlessly efficient ship that drives hard for profit. It's not unusual for the company to reduce head count even when it's doing well. Foroughi executes with a hands-on management style that has, at times, seen him struggle to delegate to execs who don't fit the mold. And the company's recent financial success has also caught the attention of short sellers who have raised questions about its data practices.

With TikTok, Foroughi would be taking on an organization with a much bigger spotlight — and the heat that comes from running a user-generated content business popular among teens and often lambasted by parents.

Most of the former AppLovin employees, competitors, and business associates who spoke with BI believe he's up to the task. They say Foroughi's smarts, as well as his tendency to forgo the marketing jazz hands and let the product do the talking, position him well to crank up the dial for TikTok's ad business.

"We've been competing for over a decade, and I've never seen anyone like him — he's all around amazing, it hurts me to say it," said an executive at one of AppLovin's competitors. "He's the most talented CEO I have ever seen."

Foroughi acknowledged that the TikTok bid is uncharted territory for him, but "I don't really care about 'uncomfortable,'" he said. "I do what I think is right for my business."

An Iranian export

Foroughi and his family fled Iran when he was four years old, in the fallout of the Iranian Revolution.

They settled in Laguna Beach, California. His father, once one of Iran's leading real estate developers, left nearly all his wealth behind, and the family had to adjust to a more frugal lifestyle, a new culture, and a different language.

"My parents had to give up a lot to get us over here," Foroughi said. "Knowing that, you always have this motivation inside you to perform."

After graduating with a degree in finance from the University of California, Berkeley, Foroughi took a job as a derivatives trader. He found it a lonely existence. He wanted to build something of his own, and he wanted to work with people.

He worked at a marketing agency for small businesses, which later morphed into a social media marketing company. Eventually, as the app stores of Apple and Google became dominant, he looked to apps.

With a small team of engineers in Palo Alto, Foroughi created a fashion app, then a dating app.

"They stunk," Foroughi said. "We got rid of them."

In 2012, they launched their third attempt — an app that allowed friends to connect and send recommendations for other apps to download. This one stuck. If you were playing "Words with Friends," the app could send a push notification to your contacts, asking them to join. AppLovin was born.

Like many tech companies, AppLovin — which Foroughi insists wasn't inspired by McLovin, the nerdy character in the stoner film "Superbad" — decided to pivot to advertising. It expanded from a ground-floor garage to offices on three continents, and more than 1,500 employees as of December 2024, and a market capitalization of $140 billion at the time of publication.

AppLovin's HQ in Palo Alto, California.

AppLovin

The business model is fairly simple: It helps app developers make money and find users using in-app ads. But under the surface is a highly optimized AI-powered algorithm designed to entice businesses with the promise that chucking $1 into the machine will net $2, $5, or $10 in profit.

It's a snug fit for TikTok, where ads for figure-hugging jeans, grip socks for soccer, and campaigns for major brands like Coca-Cola and Apple are slotted between consumable vertical videos. While TikTok has soared in popularity, particularly among Gen Z, its ad revenue lags behind Google, Meta, and Amazon. AppLovin thinks its adtech can help close the gap.

AppLovin has also widened its aperture beyond its core gaming roots in recent months. After it opened up its ad platform to e-commerce advertisers, some said that they were excited for an alternative to Meta, which had become increasingly expensive in their hunt for new customers. Mike True, CEO of the e-commerce marketing platform Prescient AI, said AppLovin is the fourth most invested-in channel among its advertiser clients, behind Meta, Google, and Amazon Ads.

"The fact that advertisers continue to invest in AppLovin, even amid a cautious market, suggests growing confidence in its long-term role within the performance stack," True said.

Last year, the company posted net income of $1.58 billion at 34% margins — a margin profile almost on a par with Meta, and ahead of its closest adtech rival, The Trade Desk, which had a profit margin of 16% in 2024. AppLovin's annual revenue rose 43% to $4.7 billion.

But some observers said that while AppLovin helped e-commerce advertisers extract more sales from current customers, it was less effective in driving sales from new ones. Jones Road Beauty was one of AppLovin's early e-commerce clients, but its CEO, Cody Plofker, told BI it's no longer using AppLovin.

"We found it not to be very incremental with new customers," Plofker said.

Foroughi said that the e-commerce product is still in its infancy and doesn't yet work for everyone.

"But it will as we build it out," he added.

AppLovin' it

One Silicon Valley tech veteran who interacted with AppLovin in the early years said taking meetings with Foroughi was a "breath of fresh air." He cut to the chase, no two-martini lunches necessary.

"We got on calls and he'd be very to the point, versus the mindset where relationships precede business — a very Valley kind of guy," the person said.

Simon Spaull was AppLovin's first hire in Europe in 2014. He reluctantly entertained the idea at first.

"No one had heard of it and it was a rubbish name," Spaull said.

He was soon convinced. Spaull stayed at the company for almost seven years, as it continuously posted record annual revenue, mostly growing traction through word of mouth in the gaming community.

Foroughi has remained deeply enmeshed with day-to-day operations, including customer service. Up until around a year ago, he ran product and human resources alongside his CEO role. (He said he wanted to "get more involved in making sure our culture is aligned with the principles we had when we started the business.") When he's not traveling, he sits among the engineers.

"You don't know what's going on in your business if you don't work with your employees," Foroughi said.

Foroughi has said some of the biggest mistakes he made as CEO involved taking outside advice, including briefly hiring a chief operating officer in 2012.

"I thought, what's the point of me at this company, I'm hands-on, I'm not going to defer to this hire," Foroughi said at a recent conference held by the investment bank Jefferies.

He had a similar reaction after following advice to bring on a chief revenue officer and a brand ad sales team, with staffers who were paid more than the company's best engineer, the person making the actual product.

Foroughi pictured in AppLovin's early years.

AppLovin

"It bugged the crap out of me," Foroughi said. He scrapped the entire team.

The company's strategy has been defined in part by unrelenting efficiency. Foroughi, who said he considers Elon Musk as an inspiration, counts EBITDA — or profit — per employee as one of his most important success metrics.

The company recently sold off its entire mobile gaming studio business — developers of hit games like "Mobile Strike" and "Project Makeover" — deeming it surplus after the apps had been sucked for data to use for its advertising algorithms.

Foroughi also showed a cut-throat streak in 2022, when the gaming software development company Unity announced its intention to acquire AppLovin's app advertising rival, IronSource. Seeking to derail the merger, AppLovin put in an unsolicited $20 billion bid to merge with Unity, but only on the provision that Unity drop the IronSource deal. Rather than make his offer to Unity's management team and the board, Foroughi went public to appeal directly to Unity's main shareholders: the investment firms Sequoia and Silver Lake.

Unity's management team wasn't happy, and they rejected the hostile takeover bid.

Foroughi has no regrets.

"The only way to disrupt that deal" was for AppLovin to make its takeover offer public, Foroughi said. "Yes, it was a little uncomfortable, obviously."

AppLovin went public on the Nasdaq in 2021.

Nasdaq

Those within Foroughi's orbit say the billionaire has a generous side.

A banker who worked on AppLovin's 2021 initial public offering recalled receiving an updated draft of the registration statement and noticing that Foroughi had recently sold off around $10 million of stock, at a low price, pre-IPO. He asked Foroughi why.

"He's like, 'Uh, I'm surprised you found that. Yes, I sold some stock back to the company to distribute it to the team that was under-equitized," the person said.

A busted China tie-up and the attack of the short sellers

The TikTok suitor is no stranger to US-China tensions. In 2016, Foroughi signed a deal with a Chinese private-equity firm that valued AppLovin at $1.4 billion, and would provide a $1 billion cash injection. The deal was blocked by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States on national security grounds.

"CFIUS saved my ass," Foroughi said at the Jefferies Private Growth Conference earlier this year, referring to AppLovin's financial performance since.

The company's methods have been called into question in recent months with four short-seller reports, published in quick succession.

Activist hort-seller Carson Block, founder of Muddy Waters Research, thinks AppLovin's recent vertical stock market climb is too good to be true.

Muddy Waters Research

The most high-profile, from Carson Block's Muddy Waters Research, said AppLovin was "impermissibly extracting" data from top apps like Meta, Google, and TikTok, and targeting ads at "high value users" without their consent. The report also said AppLovin was using underhanded techniques to claim credit for sales it didn't generate.

In an email to BI, Block said that Muddy Waters believed Foroughi "lied" in a March blog post, when he pushed back on the idea that the company "uses persistent user identifiers without their consent." Persistent identifiers follow users across different websites and devices, and it can be difficult for users to delete them or even know they exist. Muddy Waters said AppLovin's use of these IDs violates various platforms' terms of service and privacy laws in some jurisdictions.

Block also said that Foroughi's background pre-AppLovin "supports our opinion that he should not be trusted." He was referring to Foroughi's tenure at a company called Claria, which owned a controversial eWallet software called Gator, that was said at the time to have distributed "adware" that collected users' browsing habits, and bombarded them with pop-up ads. One of Foroughi's early ad networks, SocialHour, was removed from Facebook in 2009 for violating its platform policies.

Foroughi has previously said in blog posts that the short-seller reports were "littered with inaccuracies and false assertions" and were aimed at driving down AppLovin's share price for their own financial gain. He told BI that he worked at Claria for a few months as a 25-year-old. In response to questions about SocialHour, he said all companies that monetized Facebook's inventory were removed when Facebook brought monetization in-house.

Some industry insiders saw the reports as confirmation of their bafflement at AppLovin's success, particularly in light of its reliance on mobile games, which are not always highly valued by big brands and agencies.

In the running for TikTok

AppLovin has proposed merging its company with all of TikTok's international business — not just TikTok US. Foroughi describes this as an "enhancement" to Oracle, which is TikTok's cloud provider in the US. Under AppLovin's proposal, Oracle would still provide data storage and security. Oracle didn't respond to requests for comment.

AppLovin has also pitched itself as a salve for TikTok's woes.

TikTok, under CEO Shou Zi Chew, has repeatedly denied that its app threatens national security in the US.

Chip Somodevilla via Getty Images

"There are really big national security and data issues, and I think we could solve them," Foroughi told BI.

AppLovin says it has expertise in both handling user data and controlling complex algorithms, which it believes could help it remove biases from TikTok's content recommendation system.

"I see what folks in the administration are doing now, what someone like Elon has sacrificed to give back to the country, and I think we could play a small part here," Foroughi said in an interview that took place before Musk and Trump's spectacular falling out this week.

TikTok didn't respond to a request for comment.

Ari Paparo, a former Googler and adtech exec who now runs the marketing media company Marketecture, said AppLovin has some big advantages in its TikTok bid: Its monster market capitalization makes the financial side feasible, it has proven monetization capabilities that could make ads on TikTok better, and it isn't "Big Tech," which has drawn antitrust scrutiny.

On the other hand, he said, "The company is a bit of an unknown in DC."

That may soon change. In April, Foroughi was spotted at the launch party of Donald Trump Jr.'s private members club.

"I'm reclusive by design, so part of the challenge has been that I have to get out there, and get to be known, and I just wasn't before this," Foroughi said.

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A 4-step guide to investing success for recent college grads

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• Start investing early to leverage compounding for long-term financial success.
• Financial planners recommend budgeting, building a buffer, and opening investment accounts.
• Consider a diversified portfolio with stocks and bonds, adjusting for risk tolerance.

So you've just graduated from college. Congratulations!

It's an exciting time in your life as you get ready to enter the workforce. One of the great things about being at the start of your career journey is that you have ample time to figure out the path you want to take in life and where your passions lie.

Time is also your greatest asset when it comes to setting yourself up for a life of investing success.

Thanks to the power of compounding, which Albert Einstein famously called the eighth wonder of the world, the earlier you start investing, the better. According to insurance firm Mass Mutual, a 22-year-old who invests $500 a month will have $2,255,844 by age 65, assuming the stock market delivers an average annual return of 8%. That number falls to $972,542 if one starts investing at 32.

But investing isn't always easy, especially early on in your career when your earnings are lower. The process may also feel daunting and complicated if you haven't done it before.

To put those fears to rest, we've come up with a step-by-step guide on how to best get your financial house in order so you'll thank yourself down the road.

Come up with a budget

There's no one-size-fits-all approach for budgeting, so it's important to come up with a plan that works for you, said Melissa Cox, the Dallas-based owner of Future-Focused Wealth. Trying to keep up with someone who may have a different budget than you do is one of the most common mistakes she sees young people make.

"So many people come out of school and they just go crazy spending money," Cox said. "Social media and everyone sees what everyone else is doing — don't fall into that."

A good rule of thumb is to set aside 20% of your pre-tax income, according to Bryan Kuderna, the founder of New Jersey-based Kuderna Financial Team. So, if your salary is $100,000, you should be trying to save $20,000 a year.

But again, the practical savings rate will vary from person to person. Many recent grads have student loans to tackle, so it's good to understand what your repayment options are, Cox said. Maybe forgiveness is possible, or lower monthly payments based on your income. Perhaps refinancing your loans will allow for more manageable payments.

Finally, it's important to keep yourself a priority, Cox said. For example, perhaps you really value traveling or shopping — it's good to set some money aside for those things as well.

Build a buffer

When you start working, it's smart to set up a retirement account like a 401(k) or Roth IRA and start contributing right away. But we'll get to that in the next section.

When it comes to your money outside those accounts, the first thing you want to do — assuming you don't have credit-card debt — is build up a buffer of six months of living expenses, Kuderna said.

This is because people in their 20s often have big life events that they need the money for, he said. Having it in risky assets like stocks makes it vulnerable to downside in the near term.

"I always say liquidity is huge for a young professional," Kuderna said. "I might move out, I might have to get a new car, I might be getting engaged, married, a kid — all these things that can happen in your 20s."

While you might not want your money invested in stocks right away, you also don't want to have it just sitting in a checking account. Instead, plug it into a high-yield savings account or a money market fund to collect a better yield while short-term interest rates are still high.

Open multiple investment accounts

OK, now for the investment accounts.

First, make sure you have a Roth IRA or 401(k) set up with your employer and are collecting their monthly minimum match. As of 2025, you can contribute up to $23,500 to a 401(k) and $7,000 to a Roth IRA. 401(k) contributions are made with pre-tax money; the money is then taxed upon withdrawal. Roth IRA contributions are made with post-tax income, and eventual withdrawals are not taxed.

Setting these accounts up is important because the money comes straight out of your paychecks — it's like it never existed, and there's less of a temptation to spend it since withdrawals before you're 59-and-a-half years old are penalized at 10%. Plus, you can take advantage of the tax benefits.

"I'm huge on Roth options, especially for young people," Kuderna said. "If we can get tax-free growth for another four or five decades, that's worth its weight in gold."

Once those are set up, open up a brokerage account to invest your excess savings.

Considering your cash savings, Kuderna said this is taking a three-pronged approach: having cash for the short-term, a brokerage account with stock investments for the medium-term (maybe a down payment for a house in five, 10, or 20 years), and retirement accounts for the long-term.

Having a brokerage account for medium-term investments will allow you to capture potential market upside while not being subject to the 10% penalty of withdrawing money from a 401(k) or Roth IRA early.

"You don't want to neglect the mid-term," he said. "When you're 40 or you're 50 and you need money, you don't want to hit your retirement accounts, and you don't want to have it all just sitting in cash."

Decide where to invest

Now that you have your accounts set up, it's time to decide where to invest.

The classic portfolio structure is 60% stocks and 40% bonds. Stocks, while riskier, offer greater upside potential. Meanwhile, bonds are supposed to act as a buffer to stock market volatility by protecting your capital, producing a steady yield, and appreciating during times of economic distress.

But since you're in your 20s, you might consider allocating even more of your money to stocks since you can likely withstand more volatility, according to Chris Chen, the founder of Insight Financial Strategists. He said an 80/20 portfolio may be more appropriate.

How you allocate money in your medium-term and long-term investment accounts may look different, however. For your 401(k) or Roth IRA, one simple way to invest for the long term is by buying a target-date fund. For example, you might choose the Vanguard Target Retirement 2065 Fund (VLXVX) or the State Street Target Retirement 2070 Fund (SSGQX).

These funds automatically adjust your allocations to stocks and bonds as you age. As you start to approach retirement, the percentage of your money in bonds starts to increase to preserve your capital. Right now, the Vanguard 2065 fund has 53.1% of its assets in the Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund, which is made up of US stocks; 37.5% of the fund is in the Vanguard Total International Stock Index Fund; 6.5% is in US bonds; and 2.9% is in international bonds.

Expense ratios, or the fees that certain funds charge, are also something to keep in mind. The Vanguard Target Retirement funds, for example, have a fairly cheap expense ratio of 0.08% a year. The cheapest S&P 500 index fund is the Fidelity 500 Index Fund (FXAIX) at 0.015%.

For your medium-term investments, you should assess your risk-tolerance and timeline. Stock valuations are high at the moment, which suggests average 10-year returns may not be great. So if you need the money in five-to-10 years, being fully in stocks might be the wrong approach.

But if you feel you can have a longer timeline than that, Kuderna said investing in bluechip stock indexes like the S&P 500 is a good approach. If you want to be especially aggressive, you might consider investing heavily in tech stocks, he said. The sector is often riskier than other areas of the market, but has seen explosive growth over the last 15 years.

Some funds that offer exposure to tech stocks include the Technology Select Sector SPDR Fund (XLK), the iShares US Technology ETF (IYW), and the Invesco NASDAQ 100 ETF (QQQM).

"If you look at the greatest returns over a long period of time, it's in equities, it's people who have a higher risk appetite," Kuderna said. "If you've done those beginning steps of building a rainy day fund, setting money aside, not carrying any bad debt — if you're good there and we can afford ourselves a long-term time horizon, then we should try to almost encourage ourselves to be a little more aggressive."

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I visited Amazon's robot factories and got an inside look at how it builds and trains them

I got an up-close look at Amazon's autonomous robot, Proteus.

Madeline Stone

• Amazon has invested heavily in robotics and automation for its fulfillment centers.
• Its robots include mobile units, robotic arms, and sortation systems.
• Business Insider got an inside look at how the robots are made in facilities outside Boston.

Amazon is making big bets on robotics and automation.

What started with its $775 million acquisition of Kiva Systems in 2012 has grown to include a fleet of more than 750,000 robots and an operation that employs more than 16,000 people.

"We have really pioneered new work and allowed Amazon to be more productive and take care of our frontline employees by improving the safety bar," Tye Brady, chief technologist at Amazon Robotics, said.

I recently got to see the facilities in North Reading and Westborough, Massachusetts, where Amazon builds and tests its warehouse robots. It was a sprawling look at what modern manufacturing looks like in the US.

Take a look inside:

I started the day at the North Reading office. A lineup of Amazon's robots past and present greets visitors at the entrance.

Madeline Stone

The green one at the front is Amazon's latest mobile drive unit, Proteus, which can sense objects and humans in its path and move around them. The robots get older the further along the line you go.

The facility is huge, stretching 209,000 square feet. From my view on the mezzanine, I could see mobile drive units that had just been built on the assembly line.

Madeline Stone / BI

The blue robots, called Hercules, move pods of items around a fenced area of a fulfillment center. Each Hercules robot can lift a pod that weighs up to 1,250 pounds. The green robots, called Proteus, do similar tasks but move autonomously.

The North Reading facility was previously home to Kiva Robotics before Amazon acquired the company in 2012.

Julie Mitchell, director of robotic sortation technology at Amazon Robotics, told me how the company approaches robot design.

Madeline Stone

She said that Amazon works with teams in its fulfillment centers to understand which areas could be made more efficient with automation. Robots go through early alpha testing and then beta testing before they are ready for mass production.

"We work backwards from our customer needs and think about which systems will help enable better delivery and faster speeds to our customers," she said. "We look to try to develop systems that will add value within one to two years in our fulfillment network."

Looking to the left, I could also see other robots being tested.

Madeline Stone

On the middle floor are Pegasus robots, which transport packages around sortation centers.

The yellow robotic arm below is Robin, which uses suction to pick up packages.

I got a closer look at the Pegasus robots as we made our way down to the manufacturing floor.

Madeline Stone

They zoomed around the floor, testing out new software updates.

The Pegasus robot is an evolution of the Hercules robot, using the same base but with a conveyor belt on top. The orange robots are older, from before Amazon rebranded its Prime services to blue.

I also got my first up-close look at Proteus. The eyes indicate he's spotted me.

I got an up-close look at Amazon's autonomous robot, Proteus.

Madeline Stone

Proteus is designed to work alongside employees on a shipping dock. Those workers don't get specific training to work with robots.

"It was really important to us to make Proteus intuitive to understand so the human-robot interaction is seamless," Mitchell said. "We used the eyes as a way to communicate."

When we got down to the manufacturing floor, I saw this poster that had been signed by Jeff Bezos.

Madeline Stone

Amazon has now built more than 750,000 mobile robots, in addition to its robotic arms and sortation systems.

Erica McClosky, director of manufacturing and technical operations at Amazon Robotics, leads teams that build and test robots before they are sent to fulfillment centers.

Madeline Stone

About 300 people work on the physical side of building and maintaining Amazon's robotic fleet. The majority of those employees are on the assembly line, while others receive and ship materials and test and repair robots.

"We're in a very controlled, stable environment here, so we're able to, for all of our new products, continuously look at how we optimize the entire flow," McClosky said.

Here, workers put together subassemblies that will be incorporated into Proteus' design.

Madeline Stone

Amazon's manufacturing stations have built-in automation, too, including torque tools.

"If you're supposed to install, let's say, four fasteners, it'll make sure that you only store four fasteners and that it has the right rotation," McClosky said.

Employees receive parts to be installed on the robots. The parts are scanned so that they can be traced as they travel through Amazon's ecosystem.

Madeline Stone

"If there were ever to be a problem, we could trace back and understand what's happening," McClosky said.

Amazon sources its robotic parts globally as well as from some local suppliers.

I saw one assembly line building Hercules robots and another building Proteus. Lights above each station signal green when everything is in place and red when something is wrong.

Madeline Stone

The North Reading facility has four assembly lines with 10 stations each. Employees at each station complete their assembly tasks in about seven and a half minutes, using a lift assist for heavy items.

The last step of the assembly process for Hercules is putting the blue cover on top.

Madeline Stone

Amazon asked that I not take close-up photos of the robots without their covers on due to the sensitivity of the technology.

The assembly process for Hercules takes about an hour from start to finish. When the robots are complete, they're picked up from the assembly line by this lift and placed onto the floor.

Madeline Stone

Lift assists are in place in various parts of the manufacturing process so that workers don't strain to pick up heavy objects.

After the robots come off the line, they take a few minutes to get their batteries charged.

Madeline Stone

The robots' batteries get charged to about 80% capacity before they are sent out to fulfillment centers.

They then line up to be tested in these blue-fenced structures. McClosky said Amazon's testing technology is one of the biggest and most helpful innovations it's rolled out in recent years.

Madeline Stone

She said that Amazon used to test its robots by filling big pods with bricks and having them drive around the factory floor for hours.

"What used to take us hours for testing here on the production floor is now done in minutes," McClosky said. "It's looking at environments that it would see in the fulfillment center, so under different loads, making sure that it is fully, fully functional."

Proteus has its own diagnostic center where it calibrates its cameras and sensors to maintain "clear vision," Mitchell said.

Madeline Stone

Proteus uses AI to "see" the space it's navigating and decide whether it can safely navigate around an object or needs to stop moving forward.

Hercules is the robot Amazon has made the most units of over the years.

Madeline Stone

"It's kind of our workhorse in the fulfillment centers," McClosky said.

After the robots have been charged and tested, they line up for "robot graduation."

Madeline Stone

No caps and gowns here — "graduating" just means they're ready to be put to use.

The robots actually drive themselves to the loading dock and put themselves on an individual pallet.

Madeline Stone

Since Hercules can't detect humans the same way that Proteus can, this is a restricted area.

They're now ready to be shipped out to fulfillment centers and be put to work.

Madeline Stone

They'll be shipped using the loading docks seen in the background.

Next up, I watched a robotic arm called Robin pick up packages from a conveyor belt. Robin works in conjunction with Pegasus, the mobile robot with a conveyor belt we saw earlier.

Madeline Stone

The packages I saw Robin pick up were all Amazon-branded, but the robot also frequently encounters packaging from third-party brands using Amazon's fulfillment centers.

"We're constantly using AI to train Robin to see different package types, different surfaces, different types of materials that it has to grasp," Mitchell said. "We can change the way we grasp it by changing which actuator we send down to pick up the package. That helps cover the gamut of different shapes."

I also saw Proteus in action, practicing transporting carts around the floor.

Madeline Stone

Unlike Amazon's other robots, Proteus doesn't need to be kept in a fenced-off space away from people.

This robotic arm, Cardinal, scans packages' labels, determines which cart to place them into, and tightly packs them in like Tetris.

Madeline Stone

Cardinal works in conjunction with Proteus.

"When Cardinal finishes the stacking and creates a complete container, it will signal to Proteus to come and take that container and replenish that container," Mitchell said. "The two robotic systems working together has created an end-to-end automated path from sorting to loading that container onto our trailers and our ship dock."

It's a powerful machine.

Madeline Stone

I could feel the ground shake as Cardinal worked.

After the tour wrapped up, we traveled to the other Amazon Robotics facility in the Boston area.

Madeline Stone

It's located about 50 miles away, in Westborough, Massachusetts.

Both this facility and the one in North Reading also have corporate offices and research and development labs located directly off the manufacturing floor.

Madeline Stone

Amazon views this as a competitive advantage in that it allows for a more direct feedback loop. McClosky said that engineers and manufacturing staff work "shoulder to shoulder."

This facility is even bigger than the one in North Reading. Looking out from the mezzanine, it felt like the factory floor stretched on forever.

Madeline Stone

It covers about 350,000 square feet of space.

Tye Brady, the chief technologist for Amazon Robotics, spoke about the work Amazon is doing in physical AI.

Madeline Stone

He compared the way Amazon is thinking about robotics and physical AI to the way people thought about the computer in the 1950s.

"I think if you were to roll ahead in time, you're going to see more and more physical AI agents used as tools to help people be more human, to help people be more capable of who they are, to allow people to connect to one another more readily," he said.

I got a good look at Amazon's storage and sortation robot, Sequoia, from above.

Madeline Stone

Sequoia is a containerized storage system that brings pods over to a station where employees pick items out of totes so that they can be shipped to customers.

On the left is a traditional fabric pod that can be moved by Amazon's mobile robots and brought to employees for picking.

Madeline Stone

Brady said the items stored in each pod are somewhat random and chosen more so to fill the space. This is how Amazon has traditionally stored items, and it's actually what the original Kiva system did even before it was part of Amazon.

Amazon's newest robot, Vulcan, can pick from these pods using a sense of touch.

However, Sequoia uses plastic containers to store items instead of the yellow fabric pods. Brady pointed to a screen that displays what the robot is doing at each moment.

Madeline Stone

The totes have all kinds of goods, from water bottles to toys to Amazon Basics cables.

"This is where automation really helps us because we can take just about any object that fits inside one of these totes and place it in there," Brady said.

A unique code on each tote helps keep track of what's inside.

The robotic system brings the totes to an employee work station. The conveyor belt is positioned at the optimal height for picking in order to reduce injuries.

Madeline Stone

Brady explained how Sequoia helps workers in fulfillment centers to pick customers' orders.

"When a customer goes on Amazon.com and they make an order, we look at the entirety of the Amazon network, we figure out which building has the goods closest to the customer, how we can make a meaningful delivery route for that customer, and then at the right time, we'll call the right pod to a station where we can now have the goods that the customer has ordered inside this tote," he said.

Sequoia can also be used to process and stow items that are just arriving at a fulfillment center.

Madeline Stone

"I just pick the item out and then place it into another container to be packed and processed downstream," he said.

Our last stop on the tour was to see the Sparrow robotic arm.

Madeline Stone

Unlike the other robotic arms I saw earlier, Sparrow handles individual items rather than packages.

Sparrow is responsible for consolidating items into totes. Hercules robots bring pods to the Sparrow station.

Madeline Stone

"The robotic system extracts the tote, presents it to the Sparrow arm," Brady said. "That arm has its own end effector on it, and what it's going to do is pick up objects and try to create a more full tote."

Sparrow can pick up more than 200 million different items.

Madeline Stone

It uses an AI system that looks down from above to differentiate between objects, look for damage, and determine the best path to place it into a bin.

"That's really the holy grail when it comes to manipulation: being able to successfully identify and manipulate a huge variety of goods," Brady said.

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