Alex Song

Founder & CEO Proxima

Last Reviewed: September 19, 2026

Executive Summary

Alex Song founded Proxima and launched it in April 2022, directly into the hole that Apple’s iOS 14 privacy changes had blown in consumer advertising. His framing of the opportunity was precise: the update abruptly severed the signal between marketers and their customer data, and what brands needed was not a workaround for tracking but an independent source of intelligence about buyer behaviour. Proxima’s answer is a proprietary Commerce Graph assembled across the wider consumer market — the company puts it at more than 100 million buyers — against which an individual brand’s own Shopify and Meta data can be read. The company has since moved up the stack from audience targeting into what it now calls Conversion Intelligence, free at entry level and used by more than 2,200 brands, feeding a Creative Engine that produces data-backed creative briefs, personas and custom audiences rather than just lists to target. Song’s route here was unusual for an ad-tech founder: investment banking and principal investments at Goldman Sachs, then investing at Pershing Square Capital Management, before moving into operating roles.

Career Highlights

• Worked in investment banking and principal investments at Goldman Sachs.
• Worked as an investment professional at Pershing Square Capital Management.
• Served as chief executive of DojoMojo, a partnership, giveaway and SMS acquisition platform for ecommerce and media brands.
• Founded Proxima and launched it in April 2022 as a response to the loss of advertising signal following Apple’s iOS 14 privacy changes.
• Reported 400 per cent revenue growth and a proprietary network of more than 12,000 business-to-consumer brands and media companies by December 2023.
• Launched an AI-powered consumer intelligence platform in December 2023, extending the product into unit economics, capital efficiency and profitability analysis.
• Repositioned the company around Conversion Intelligence, now used by more than 2,200 brands, with a free entry tier drawing on connected Shopify and Meta accounts.
• Built the Commerce Graph, a consumer behaviour dataset the company describes as spanning more than 100 million buyers.
• Shipped Creative Engine, Creative Briefs, Personas, Custom Audiences and AI Audiences on top of that foundation.
• Secured coverage for Proxima in TechCrunch, VentureBeat, Fast Company, AdMonsters, Retail TouchPoints, Advertising Week and Business of Fashion.

Professional Journey

Song began his career in finance, working in investment banking and principal investments at Goldman Sachs before moving to Pershing Square Capital Management, the activist investment firm, as an investment professional. That grounding in unit economics and capital efficiency shows up later in the product itself — Proxima’s December 2023 platform release was explicitly framed around business health, profitable unit economics and capital efficiency rather than around impressions or click-through rates, which is not how most advertising technology companies talk.

He moved from investing into operating with DojoMojo, a platform that helps ecommerce and media brands grow through partnerships — co-marketing campaigns, giveaways and SMS subscriber acquisition. It is a business built on the same underlying observation that drives Proxima: that a single brand’s own audience is a small and expensive place to grow from, and that the useful signal lives in the overlap between brands.

Proxima launched in April 2022. The timing was not incidental. Apple’s App Tracking Transparency changes in iOS 14 had cut off the per-user signal that direct-to-consumer advertising had been built on, and Song’s stated view was that this created a moment where a data intelligence layer was needed to power acquisition, retention and operations for consumer companies. Proxima’s initial product used machine learning over a proprietary cross-brand network to improve ad targeting on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok, and it grew quickly — 400 per cent revenue growth and a network spanning more than 12,000 business-to-consumer brands and media companies by the end of 2023.

In December 2023 the company launched an AI-powered consumer intelligence platform, widening from targeting into an AI-driven business health check covering profitable unit economics, capital efficiency and performance. Through the same period Song published extensively on the strategic consequences of the privacy shift — under the Forbes Technology Council byline, in guest columns for TechCrunch and VentureBeat, and across trade outlets including AdMonsters, Retail TouchPoints and MyTotalRetail — arguing consistently that targeted advertising was not ending but being rebuilt on different foundations.

The company’s current shape reflects a further move up the value chain. Proxima now leads with Conversion Intelligence: a brand connects its Shopify store and Meta ad account, Proxima reads its conversion data against the Commerce Graph, and the output is not an audience list but strategic direction — data-backed creative briefs for Meta, audience personas, and custom or AI-generated audiences. The entry layer is free, more than 2,200 brands use it, and the company describes itself as building the intelligence layer behind modern growth. Proxima’s own About page no longer names its leadership team, so the current configuration of the executive group is not publicly documented.

Education

University of California, Berkeley

BA with Highest Honors, Business Administration