AI Made Building Apps 10x Easier. These Stocks Win.
I saw this chart on X the other day that I think you absolutely cannot ignore as an investor. iOS app releases just hit +60% YoY growth in December 2025. For context, that number was basically flat for the past three years. Three years of nothing… then a vertical rip. The catalyst? Agentic coding tools like Claude Code and Cursor. I have a front row seat to this trend. I spend 16+ hours a day vibe coding. I’ve shipped more applications in the past few months than I did in the prior few years combined. The friction to build software has collapsed. And I’m not unique. Every technical founder I talk to has the same story. Here’s where it gets interesting for investors… We’re entering the third phase of this trend.The first-order beneficiaries were obvious: Cursor, Claude, the AI coding tools themselves. The second-order play has been databases like MongoDB and Supabase as developers needed somewhere to store data. But now I’m watching something new unfold in real time. These entrepreneurs (myself included) are shipping apps… and then asking themselves: “How do I actually grow this thing as a business?” This is the third-order impact. And it’s where I think the real alpha is hiding. The technical side of shipping has been solved. The growth side has not. Every new app that gets vibe-coded into existence needs users, needs to convert them, needs to retain them, needs to monetize them. Who captures that spend? I used ChatGPT Deep Research to map the entire post-ship lifecycle and identify who benefits from each marginal dollar these new apps will spend to grow.
This is a technique pod shops use constantly. They hunt for second- and third-order effects because by the time it shows up in earnings, the alpha is gone. You need to be positioned before the P&L inflection. I think I’m 6-12 months ahead of the market on this one. Here’s what I found… The Result:
Our AI analysis mapped the entire post-ship lifecycle into six spend buckets that every new app must navigate:
Each bucket translates directly to public equity exposure. The names I’m watching most closely:Cloudflare (NET)Cloudflare (NET) stands out as the most underappreciated play here. I can tell you from firsthand experience: every single application I ship goes through Cloudflare. DNS, CDN, DDoS protection, edge caching. It’s become muscle memory at this point. Why? Because the moment you have users, you need your site to be fast and secure. Period. Cloudflare’s free tier hooks you early. Then as you scale, you upgrade for bandwidth, Workers serverless functions, Zero Trust security. The research confirms this pattern at scale. Cloudflare already serves ~25% of websites globally. Their startup programs are specifically targeting AI-native builders. The CEO has publicly noted that AI startups are deploying on Cloudflare for performance and cost advantages. Here’s the variant perception: the market views Cloudflare cautiously right now. But if customer additions reaccelerate from this wave of new developers, the stock will need to re-rate higher. The elasticity to app volume is extremely high. KPIs to watch: paying customer count growth (especially <$100k segment), traffic trends, Workers adoption. Google (GOOGL) and Meta (META)Google (GOOGL) and Meta (META) are the obvious first-order CAC beneficiaries, but that doesn’t mean they’re fully priced. Think about it from the entrepreneur’s perspective. You just shipped your app. What’s the first thing you do? You run ads. A $50 Instagram test. A Google Search campaign for your core keywords. Maybe some YouTube pre-roll. This is entrepreneurship 101. Now multiply that by thousands of new apps hitting the market every month. More apps vying for attention = more bidding competition = higher CPCs = higher ad revenue for the platforms. Google’s ad business is highly elastic to increased advertiser count. Meta’s self-serve model means even micro-budgets contribute at scale. The research flagged something important: watch for growth in small advertiser counts. Meta regularly discloses active advertiser numbers. If that metric accelerates beyond trend, it’s confirmation the app wave is flowing through. Bear case worth noting: many new apps have tiny budgets and unsustainable economics. Ad spend could be fickle. But the platforms profit from volume, not individual success stories. Other names on the watchlist (ranked by immediacy of impact):
The losers to avoid:The research also surfaced potential shorts. IT services firms like Infosys (INFY) and Globant (GLOB) could face pressure as clients demand more output for the same cost using AI. Junior developer hiring is already down ~25% YoY. Low-code platforms like Appian (APPN) face an existential question: why pay for a no-code tool when AI can write actual code? Single-feature SaaS with narrow moats are vulnerable to being “unbundled” by AI-generated alternatives. Bottom line:The market is focused on AI model providers. The real alpha might be in the picks-and-shovels for the app gold rush: infrastructure, security, and marketing platforms that capture spend regardless of which apps win. I’m personally positioned in Cloudflare and monitoring Google/Meta ad metrics closely. The KPIs to track over the next 12 months: new app launch velocity (Sensor Tower), Cloudflare customer additions, and small advertiser growth on Meta. If those inflect, the thesis is playing out. |
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