# RankGraph-2: Lifecycle Co-Design for Billion-Node Graph Learning in Recommendation

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.18379 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.18379/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 33 of its 45 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 16 Jun 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 33)

- [Graph Attention Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1710.10903/) (2017)
- [Representation Learning with Contrastive Predictive Coding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1807.03748/) (2018)
- [Inductive Representation Learning on Large Graphs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.02216/) (2017)
- [FaceNet: A Unified Embedding for Face Recognition and Clustering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1503.03832/) (2015)
- [Multi-Task Learning Using Uncertainty to Weigh Losses for Scene Geometry and Semantics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1705.07115/) (2017)
- [LightGCN: Simplifying and Powering Graph Convolution Network for Recommendation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.02126/) (2020)
- [Graph Convolutional Neural Networks for Web-Scale Recommender Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.01973/) (2018)
- [Deep Graph Infomax](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.10341/) (2018)
- [Spectral Networks and Locally Connected Networks on Graphs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1312.6203/) (2013)
- [Efficient and robust approximate nearest neighbor search using Hierarchical Navigable Small World graphs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1603.09320/) (2016)
- [Heterogeneous Graph Attention Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.07293/) (2019)
- [Heterogeneous Graph Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.01332/) (2020)
- [Graph Neural Networks in Recommender Systems: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.02260/) (2020)
- [Deep Graph Library: A Graph-Centric, Highly-Performant Package for Graph Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.01315/) (2019)
- [Actions Speak Louder than Words: Trillion-Parameter Sequential Transducers for Generative Recommendations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.17152/) (2024)
- [OneRec: Unifying Retrieve and Rank with Generative Recommender and Iterative Preference Alignment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.18965/) (2025)
- [AliGraph: A Comprehensive Graph Neural Network Platform](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1902.08730/) (2019)
- [PyTorch-BigGraph: A Large-scale Graph Embedding System](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.12287/) (2019)
- [A Survey of Graph Neural Networks for Social Recommender Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.04481/) (2022)
- [PyG 2.0: Scalable Learning on Real World Graphs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.16991/) (2025)
- [InfoNCE Loss Provably Learns Cluster-Preserving Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.07920/) (2023)
- [Spectral Collaborative Filtering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1808.10523/) (2018)
- [LiGNN: Graph Neural Networks at LinkedIn](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.11139/) (2024)
- [Heterogeneous Graph Contrastive Learning for Recommendation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.00995/) (2023)
- [Efficient Algorithms for Personalized PageRank Computation: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.05198/) (2024)
- [Large-scale Personalized Video Game Recommendation via Social-aware Contextualized Graph Neural Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.03392/) (2022)
- [GiGL: Large-Scale Graph Neural Networks at Snapchat](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.15054/) (2025)
- [PinFM: Foundation Model for User Activity Sequences at a Billion-scale Visual Discovery Platform](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.12704/) (2025)
- [Breaking the Hourglass Phenomenon of Residual Quantization: Enhancing the Upper Bound of Generative Retrieval](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.21488/) (2024)
- [Divide and Conquer: Towards Better Embedding-based Retrieval for Recommender Systems From a Multi-task Perspective](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.02657/) (2023)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Graph-based retrieval at billion-node scale requires jointly solving three tightly coupled problems -- graph construction, representation learning, and real-time serving -- yet existing work addresses each in isolation. We present RankGraph-2, a framework deployed at Meta that co-designs all three lifecycle stages for similarity-based retrieval (U2U2I and U2I2I), where each stage's requirements shape the others. Serving requires a co-learned cluster index to avoid expensive online KNN -- this pushes index co-training into the training objective. Training benefits from the observation that similarity-based retrieval tolerates pre-computed neighborhoods, eliminating online graph infrastructure -- this requires construction to produce self-contained data. Construction must also support hour-level refresh for item coverage. Acting on these cascading requirements, RankGraph-2 reduces hundreds of trillions of edges to hundreds of billions via subsampling with popularity bias correction, pre-computes multi-hop neighborhoods via personalized PageRank, and co-learns a residual-quantization cluster index that reduces serving computational cost by 83%. This lifecycle co-design enables a simple architecture to achieve 3.8 x higher recall than a GAT + Deep Graph Infomax model on a bipartite graph and 2.1 x higher than PyTorch-BigGraph on item retrieval. RankGraph-2 delivers up to +0.96% CTR and +2.75% CVR, and has powered 20+ retrieval launches across major surfaces.