Roblox just hired its first Chief Growth Officer

Roblox just hired its first ever Chief Growth Officer.

The platform is, as the kids say, at an inflection point: While it’s historically been known as a platform for child-friendly games, it’s now seeing significant traffic from adults. Its 18+ user base has grown 50% year over year, to the point where 26% of its U.S.-based players are 18 or older.

That’s big for Roblox’s bottom line, because 18+ players spend 50% more money in-game than their younger counterparts. Adults also generally spend more time gaming than kids, which could give Roblox even more of a bump, since it runs programmatic ads.

Obviously Roblox wants to chase adults’ disposable income and engagement; to do that, it launched a major initiative where it’ll pay developers more if they make “novel games” that have smoother graphics, strong storytelling, and compelling gaming loops.

Now, as part of this continued expansion, it’s brought in John Ciancutti. Per Business Insider, he’ll spearhead TikTok’s discovery team, aka the people responsible for its recommendation algorithm (which, by the way, just got a new shelf aimed at spotlighting novel games).

Ciancutti has an impressive pedigree. He comes to Roblox from Amazon, where he was General Manager for the company’s live radio app Amp, as well as VP of Consumer and Technology for Amazon Music. Before joining Amazon, he founded audio news service 60dB, which sold to Google in 2017. Ciancutti himself ended up at Google, working senior product and strategy roles in Search. He was also Director of Engineering at Facebook and spent 13 years at Netflix in various roles; when he left in 2012, he was VP of Product Engineering.

Ciancutti told BI that targeting older players is a focus of his. He’ll also try to push Roblox internationally and incorporate “a more diverse set of experiences on the platform,” BI reports.

He added that he wanted to join Roblox because of its strong creator ecosystem.

“What stands out to me about Roblox is the breadth of what the platform has become–for players, creators, developers, and brands alike,” he said. “I think there’s enormous potential to continue growing awareness across markets and audiences as the platform evolves.”

While neither Ciancutti nor Roblox shared more about what exactly he’ll do to accomplish growth, the goals are clear: more adults, more money, and more types of games to appeal to more players of all ages.

These ambitions do face challenges, though. Roblox recently lowered its 2026 revenue forecast as it invests in child safety improvements. Why the improvements? Well, it’s currently facing over 140 federal lawsuits, plus other state-level actions, following numerous incidents of adults preying on children within its platform.

One of the safety changes it has already implemented requires users to validate their age in order to chat; once their age is validated, they’re limited to chatting with other users in their rough age “bucket,” rather than being able to chat with everyone.

Anecdotal reports suggest age verification has had some impact on social traffic within games. Roblox’s own numbers show DAUs dropped from 144 million in Q4 2025 to 132 million in Q1 2026.