Whitney Wolfe Herd will remain a close partner at Bumble while two new CEOs join.
Patrick T. Fallon / AFP via Getty Images
Bumble is going private with two new co-CEOs.
Silicon Valley alums Ravi Gupta and John Hegeman will lead the company after the acquisition.
Gupta and Hegeman will be the first men to lead the “women-first” dating app since it went public.
Bumble is buzzing out of the public market.
The dating app, whose stock has plummeted over 90% since it went public in 2021, is set to go private. Ithaca Holdings agreed to acquire Bumble for $1.3 billion on Tuesday.
The deal values Bumble at $6.05 per share, a significant premium over the company’s average share price, which sank below $3 in September.
While founder Whitney Wolfe Herd will stay as a close partner, according to the announcement, Bumble will have two new CEOs when the deal closes: Ithaca co-CEOs Ravi Gupta and John Hegeman.
Who are Bumble’s new CEOs?
Ithaca Holdings is the product of two Silicon Valley alums.
Gupta spent four years working in C-suite roles at Instacart before becoming a partner at Sequoia. Hegeman previously worked as Meta’s chief revenue officer and sits on the board of Robinhood.
Both list cities around San Francisco as their residences on LinkedIn, though Bumble is expected to remain headquartered in Austin.
Gupta and Hegeman are the first men to serve as CEOs of Bumble since it went public. Wolfe Herd held the role until January 2024, when Slack alum Lidiane Jones took over. Wolfe Herd then came back as CEO in 2025.
The company previously touted its women in leadership roles.
“As for our team, our C-suite is 95% women, which can’t be said for any other tech companies,” Wolfe Herd told a blog in 2020. “Change starts at the top!”
In a press release, Wolfe Herd said that Ithaca Holdings “believes in our women-first mission, and is committed to investing in Bumble’s future.”
The dating app decline
It has been an uphill battle for Bumble since going public.
After riding a high of new users and growth during the pandemic, Bumble — and dating apps broadly — faced a new headwind: People grew weary of online dating . Monetizing dating and keeping users engaged with swiping proved more difficult than planned.
Meanwhile, Bumble has faced leadership switch-ups and the continued exit of Blackstone, the private equity giant that helped Bumble go public. In September, Business Insider reported that Blackstone was on track to exit its Bumble position by the first half of 2027.
When Wolfe Herd returned to the dating app in 2025, she had a new vision: AI will save love.
Bumble has told investors it has been building a “revolutionary” new AI dating product that would go beyond the swipe. However, analysts like Raymond James’ Andrew Marok had “real doubts” about Bumble’s ongoing tech delays, per an August note sent to investors.
Ithaca will likely try to turn this effort around. In the press release, Ithaca listed its mission as creating “lasting value in a world transformed by AI.”
Read the original article on Business Insider
