RZR (Aarki)

RZR is an American mobile and cross-screen performance-advertising company headquartered in San Francisco, California. Known as Aarki from its founding in 2010 until March 2026, the company operates an AI-driven demand-side platform (DSP) that helps mobile app developers and other brands acquire, retarget and grow users across mobile, connected TV (CTV) and other channels. RZR is a wholly owned business unit of Firy Inc. (), the holding company formerly known as Skillz Inc., which acquired Aarki in 2021. The company's website is rzr.com.

Founding and early growth as Aarki (2010–2021)

Aarki was founded in 2010 in the San Francisco Bay Area by Levon Budagyan and Sid Bhatt. The company built a mobile advertising demand-side platform combining programmatic media buying with AI-driven creative optimization, allowing mobile app developers to run and test multiple ad creatives to identify top performers. Aarki's early institutional investors included Walden Venture Capital and Kensington Capital Partners, which backed the company's Series A financing, alongside other investors such as Camp One Ventures and Scrum Ventures. Over the following decade, the platform grew to process several million mobile ad requests per second across billions of devices.

Acquisition by Skillz, Inc. (2021)

In June 2021, Skillz Inc. agreed to acquire Aarki for approximately $150 million, in a deal completed the following month for roughly $162 million in cash and stock. Skillz, Inc. said the acquisition, which combined Aarki's advertising reach — reported at the time to be more than 465 million monthly users — with Skillz's mobile gaming platform, would create an integrated advertising offering for game developers.

New leadership and independent operation (2023–2024)

In 2023, Aarki began operating as an independently managed business within Skillz Inc. under the leadership of Aman Sareen, previously General Manager at LG Ad Solutions. In March 2024, Sareen appointed a new executive team to lead the company's next phase of growth, including Avi Das as chief revenue officer (formerly head of sales at Liftoff Mobile), Vijay Agarwal as SVP of engineering (formerly head of engineering at LG Ad Solutions), Tiffany Flores as SVP of global operations (formerly of LG Ad Solutions) and Ed Haslam as SVP of marketing (formerly chief marketing officer of ZypTV). At the time, Aarki said its platform processed more than five million mobile ad requests per second across more than ten billion devices, with offices across North America, EMEA and APAC.

Rebranding to RZR (2026)

On March 17, 2026, Aarki announced it had officially rebranded as RZR, a name the company said was chosen to reflect the "precision and speed" of its advertising technology. The rebrand marked the company's expansion from a mobile-only advertising platform into a connected, cross-screen performance system spanning mobile user acquisition, retargeting, connected TV and influencer marketing, which the company described as a single intelligence layer processing more than six million queries per second across four company-operated data centers.

Announcing the rebrand, RZR chief executive Aman Sareen said the company had spent three years working toward a standard of performance it believed possible but not yet achieved, and described RZR as reflecting a connected, cross-screen intelligence system built for real-world impact. Chief revenue officer Avi Das said the company's expansion into connected TV allowed campaigns on a high-reach channel to be held to measurable performance standards rather than treated purely as a brand-awareness medium. Following the rebrand, RZR said it served brands across gaming, food and beverage, consumer apps, retail and entertainment, with offices in San Francisco, New York, London, Bangalore, Beijing, Manila and Seoul.

The rebrand coincided with Skillz Inc.'s own June 2026 transformation into the diversified holding company Firy Inc., under which RZR became one of three independently branded operating businesses alongside Skillz (mobile gaming) and Beamable (game backend and live-operations services). In its first-quarter 2026 results, reported as part of Firy Inc.'s predecessor Skillz Inc., the RZR business reported 146 percent year-over-year revenue growth and its first quarter of positive adjusted EBITDA since the 2021 acquisition.

Products and services

RZR's platform is built around a proprietary machine-learning system, which the company calls "Encore," that it says powers bidding decisions across its product lines by predicting user value at the moment of ad impression and learning continuously from campaign data.

User acquisition

RZR operates a mobile demand-side platform (DSP) that helps app developers and brands acquire new users, using predictive models intended to identify which users are likely to generate long-term value before a bid is placed.

Retargeting

The company's retargeting product is designed to re-engage lapsed app users identified as having a high likelihood of returning, spending or otherwise remaining active.

Connected TV (CTV)

RZR's connected-TV product links television ad impressions to mobile outcomes, using data-partnership-based targeting intended to connect TV-screen advertising with measurable mobile results such as app installs and return on ad spend. In 2026, RZR and LG Ad Solutions announced a joint performance-CTV offering aimed at the gaming industry, pairing LG Ad Solutions' audience data with RZR's AI-powered DSP.

Leadership

As of 2026, RZR is led by chief executive officer Aman Sareen and chief revenue officer Avi Das; other senior leaders include Wangxin Li, SVP of strategy and operations.

Offices

RZR is headquartered in San Francisco, California, with additional offices in New York, London, Bangalore, Beijing, Manila and Seoul. The company opened a new Bangalore office in 2026 as part of its expansion in the Asia-Pacific advertising market.

Ownership

RZR is a wholly owned subsidiary and operating business of Firy Inc. (), which acquired Aarki in 2021 while the parent company was still known as Skillz Inc. Following Skillz Inc.'s June 2026 rebrand to Firy Inc., RZR became one of three independently branded businesses in the Firy portfolio, alongside Skillz and Beamable.

See also

• Firy Inc.
• Skillz (company)
• Mobile advertising
• Demand-side platform
• Connected TV