The LSE Directory / Alternative data
Sensor Tower is a San Francisco based digital market intelligence company, founded in 2013 by Oliver Yeh and Alexey Malafeev out of the AngelPad startup incubator. It builds estimates of mobile app and digital advertising performance, covering downloads, in app revenue, active users, engagement, retention and ad spend, broken down by country, category and app store. The estimates are produced from a proprietary first party consumer panel combined with app store API data and statistical modelling, and delivered through a web platform, an API, and scheduled bulk feeds via Snowflake and Amazon S3. The company's product suite spans App Performance Insights and App Advertising Insights (core app store and ad spend metrics), GameIQ (gaming specific engagement and monetization analytics), Pathmatics (cross platform digital advertising intelligence across Meta, Instagram, TikTok, X, Reddit, OTT and video), Retail Media Insights, Audience Insights and Web Insights. This concentration on mobile app store and in app advertising data differentiates it from broader web analytics competitors such as SimilarWeb; customers include brand marketers, agencies and gaming publishers who license the data for competitive benchmarking, as well as financial firms, including hedge funds and investors, who use the app metrics as an alternative dataset for company and ticker level research. Sensor Tower was bootstrapped from its 2013 founding, with the two co-founders keeping ownership concentrated rather than raising large venture rounds; it took a $1 million seed round led by Rembrandt Venture Partners in August 2013. It acquired digital advertising intelligence platform Pathmatics in 2021, then in March 2024 acquired its largest competitor, data.ai (formerly App Annie), in a deal financed by Bain Capital Credit with participation from existing investor Riverwood Capital and new investor Paramark Ventures; data.ai had reported around $100 million in annual recurring revenue at the time, versus roughly $46 million in total funding Sensor Tower itself had raised historically. The company cut about 40 roles from a headcount above 270 in September 2023, when co-founder Alexey Malafeev moved from CEO to an advisory role focused on AI and Oliver Yeh became CEO; it now says it serves more than 2,500 enterprises worldwide, including Activision Blizzard, Spotify, Duolingo, Microsoft, Coca-Cola and Procter & Gamble. In 2020, BuzzFeed News reported that Sensor Tower had collected app usage data through VPN and ad blocking apps without adequate disclosure to end users; the company acknowledged the practice and said it would address it. As of mid-2026 the merged Sensor Tower and data.ai datasets run as a single combined pipeline, and the company has been publishing a "State of AI" report line tracking how generative AI features are reshaping competition and monetization across mobile and digital platforms.
