LE PERSPECTIVE / THE STORY

When Bumble went public in 2021, it was worth around $14 billion. This month, the dating app famous for letting women make the first move agreed to sell itself for $1.3 billion and leave the stock market.

The buyer is Ithaca Holdings, which is paying $6.05 a share in cash. That's about 138% more than the stock was worth before news of the talks leaked, so shareholders get a big bump, even if it's a long way from the IPO days.

Who runs Bumble now

Ithaca's co-CEOs, Ravi Gupta and John Hegeman, will lead the company. Founder Whitney Wolfe Herd stays involved, and Bumble keeps its headquarters in Austin. Ithaca describes itself as a company that rebuilds businesses for a world reshaped by AI, which hints at where it wants to take the app.

The numbers behind the price

In the second quarter of 2026, Bumble's paying users fell 16.4% to about 3.2 million, and revenue dropped 15.2% from a year earlier. Fewer people are paying to swipe, and that's what took a $14 billion company down to $1.3 billion.

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