Bumble shares soar after report relationship agency in $1bn takeover talks

Shares in relationship app firm Bumble soared by virtually 50% on Monday after a report that it’s in superior talks to be purchased for round $1bn (£757m).

Know-how holding firm Ithaca might announce a deal to purchase the Texas-based agency as early as this week, in keeping with the Wall Road Journal.

The soar in Bumble’s shares pushed its inventory market valuation to over $580m however that’s nonetheless far under a peak of greater than $14bn it reached after itemizing on the Nasdaq in 2021.

Bumble is likely one of the world’s most downloaded relationship apps, working in a crowded market the place development has slowed. The BBC has contacted Bumble and Ithaca for remark.

Bumble was launched in 2014 by Whitney Wolfe Herd, who was additionally a co-founder of relationship app large Tinder.

Wolfe Herd constructed Bumble’s model round a particular characteristic that solely allowed girls to provoke conversations with matches.

It lately deserted that rule, prompting debate amongst customers over whether or not the app had misplaced what set it other than rivals.

“Right this moment, our group is asking for extra flexibility, much less stress, and extra alternatives to create actual, significant connections and that’s what this new expertise supplies,” Wolfe Herd stated in August.

Relationship apps like Bumble have come below stress in recent times as some youthful customers have grown disillusioned with shopping for dates.

Bumble stated in 2025 that it might lower virtually a 3rd of its workforce because the trade grappled with what Wolfe Herd described as an “inflection level” in on-line relationship.

Investments in different relationship corporations have additionally soured as apps have struggled to persuade customers to pay for his or her providers.

Match Group – which owns apps together with Tinder, OkCupid and Hinge – has additionally seen its shares fall sharply from their peak in 2021.

In accordance a report by media watchdog Ofcom in 2025, adults within the UK had been spending much less time on relationship apps in comparison with three years earlier.

Some single persons are as an alternative turning to board recreation get-togethers, ebook golf equipment and different group actions within the hope of discovering a accomplice.