Bumble eyed by Ithaca Holdings to go private near $1bn

Bumble agreed to the deal on October 12, and the two companies announced it in a joint press release on October 13. Holders of Bumble’s Class A shares will receive $6.05 per share in cash. That is a premium of roughly 138% over the stock’s closing price on Friday, October 9, the last trading day before news of the talks broke.

The first reports, citing a person familiar with the matter, had put the value at around $1 billion. The final number came in higher, at about $1.3 billion.

The deal is effectively locked in. Bumble’s board and an independent special committee approved it unanimously, and affiliates of investment firm Blackstone joined Wolfe Herd in giving the shareholder consent the deal needs. That means no further shareholder vote. What remains are the usual regulatory and antitrust approvals before it closes.

Ithaca is a new firm, founded earlier this year by Ravi Gupta, a partner at venture capital firm Sequoia Capital, and John Hegeman, the former chief revenue officer of Meta, the company behind Facebook and Instagram. Their plan, reported in March, was to buy at least one public or private company and inject it with new technology, possibly AI.

Bumble is that company. Once the deal closes, Gupta and Hegeman will run Bumble as co-CEOs. Wolfe Herd, who founded Bumble in 2014 after co-founding Tinder, said in the announcement that she would “remain actively involved with Bumble.” Investors aligned with her are rolling over their stakes into the private company.

Bumble will stay based in Austin, Texas, with major offices in London and New York.

The short answer is that fewer people are paying to swipe. Bumble had been exploring a sale earlier in the year as growth in online dating slowed, and both it and Match Group, owner of Tinder and Hinge, have struggled as younger users lose interest in dating apps and turn to in-person events instead.

Bumble’s own numbers tell the story. In 2025, paying users fell by more than 11% to about 3.7 million, and yearly revenue dropped nearly 10% to roughly $966 million. By the second quarter of 2026, paying users were down 16.4% to 3.2 million, and quarterly revenue had been falling for nearly two years.

That hurts more than it sounds. A dating app with fewer members shows each person fewer good matches, which frustrates them into canceling, which shrinks the pool further.

Wolfe Herd returned as CEO in March 2025 and tried to turn things around. Bumble cut 30% of its staff in mid-2025, launched an AI dating assistant called Bee that picks matches for users instead of making them swipe, and in August dropped its signature rule that only women could send the first message. Public investors never got to see whether those changes would pay off.

Investors jumped on the first reports. Bumble’s shares surged about 50% on Monday, October 12, to close at $3.80, the stock’s best single day since it listed on the Nasdaq. Before that, the company was worth about $389 million on the market.

When trading opened after the deal was announced, Bumble shares rose 56% to $5.94, close to the $6.05 offer. Match Group’s shares rose a more modest 2%.

For long-term shareholders, it is a bittersweet result. The offer gives them a big premium over recent prices, but it is a small fraction of what Bumble was worth on its first day of trading.

For now, the apps keep running as normal. Neither company has announced changes to subscriptions, pricing or features, and Bumble says it will keep pursuing its women-first, connection-focused mission as a private company.

Over time, expect more experiments. Ithaca’s founders bought Bumble to bring in new technology, and the company had already been building an AI-enabled platform meant to push members toward real-world dates, with part of that rollout delayed into early 2027. Bumble also relaunched BFF in the US as a friendship app, while Badoo carries the business in Europe and other international markets.

Going private also means less public information. Bumble skipped its usual third-quarter earnings release and call and will report results only through its required SEC filing while the deal moves toward closing. Once it is private, outsiders will likely see far less of its numbers.