Bumble is swiping left on the public market — and it has 2 new male CEOs
Whitney Wolfe Herd will remain a close partner at Bumble while two new CEOs join. Patrick T. Fallon / AFP…
Bumble
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Bumble is in advanced talks to go private in a deal worth about $1 billion, Reuters reported on Monday, October 12, 2026. Ithaca Holdings is the prospective buyer. The talks come as Bumble tries to win back users with AI. Neither company has confirmed a deal. Both declined to comment. Still, Bumble shares surged roughly 50% to $3.80 that Monday, their biggest one-day percentage gain on record. A $1 billion price tag for a $14 billion debut Founded by Whitney Wolfe Herd in 2014, Bumble went public in 2021 at a valuation of about $14 billion. Five years later, the proposed price tells a very different story. Paolo Pescatore, an analyst for PP Foresight, said the potential agreement is proof of Bumble’s difficulties, adding that: Going private looks less like a strategic masterstroke and more like an admission that Bumble’s current strategy is failing. The numbers a buyer would inherit Bumble’s Q2 results indicate the reasons for the investors’ concerns. Its revenue declined by 15.2% year-over-year to $210.5 million. The number of paying users also dropped by 16.4% to 3.2 million. Bumble reported a net loss of $127.9 million of which $169.3 million were impairment charges, even though the adjusted EBITDA represented $72.9 million. The slide started earlier. In 2025, the company registered a near 10% drop in revenue that amounted to approximately $966 million, while its paying user base declined by more than 11% to approximately 3.7 million. Bumble Revenue and Paying Users Decline in 2025 and Q2 2026 Industry fatigue, or a Bumble problem Bumble’s competitor, Match Group, appears to be doing better as revenue fell only 1% to $853 million in the second quarter. Meanwhile, net income increased by 36% to $171 million. Tinder also showed signs of improvement. Daily active users dropped by only 4% year-on-year, which was the smallest decline in the last 10 quarters. Hinge’s revenue has increased by 22%. Match aims to bring Hinge’s annual revenue to $1 billion by 2027. Dating-app fatigue remains a challenge. But Match’s results suggest Bumble’s issues range beyond just the users getting bored with swiping. Bumble vs Match Group Q2 2026: Revenue, Profit and User Trends Can AI pull users back, or push them away Bumble hopes its AI-led Bumble 2.0 can change that. The redesign brings richer, chapter-style profiles and the possibility of swipe-free dating. Its March unveiling helped send shares up more than 40%. Wolfe Herd had earlier floated AI dating concierges, as Cryptopolitan reported. Whether users want that help is less clear. A peer-reviewed study suggests confidence in algorithms can encourage AI dating adoption. Yet an SSRN working paper reported 54% fewer usage minutes and 62% fewer app openings among the AI adopters studied. Those findings do not represent all daters. At the same time, less expensive AI will make companion chatbots more attractive than dating apps. However, the use of these chatbots raises privacy and security issues, as noted by the Congressional Research Service. The opportunity remains substantial: Grand View Research estimates a $10.7 billion global dating-app market in 2026, reaching $17.9 billion by 2033. The challenge is converting AI features into users who stay, pay, and trust the platform
Bumble is in advanced talks to go private in a deal worth about $1 billion, Reuters reported on Monday, October…
