Buyer takes company off the stock exchange: Dating app Bumble sold for billions

Interest in online dating is waning, especially among younger users, and the market value of dating apps is correspondingly weak. Nevertheless, one of them is now changing hands - for a hefty discount.

The dating app Bumble, which gave women the initiative and shook up the market, has been sold for $1.3 billion. The buyer is an investment company, as Bumble announced. With the takeover, she will delist the company from the stock exchange.

The price of the equivalent of 1.16 billion euros is at the same time a fraction of the former market value - and a hefty premium on the current prices. The problem with Bumble and competitors like Tinder is that interest in online dating has waned, especially among younger users.

When it went public at the beginning of 2021, Bumble had a market value of around $14 billion. Last week the company was worth around $340 million. Founder Whitney Wolfe Herd, who was once involved in founding Tinder, tried to give women the main role at Bumble: only they were allowed to start conversations on the app. That restriction was dropped in August as Bumble struggled with declining revenue.

The buyer of the app is the investment company Ithaca Holdings, which is backed by, among others, John Hegeman, a former top manager of the Facebook group Meta. Ithaca says its goal is to invest in companies that enrich people's lives in a world transformed by artificial intelligence. Hegeman and Ithaca co-founder Ravi Gupta will become co-heads of Bumble, according to a statement from the companies.