Bumble in Advanced Talks to Be Taken Private by Ithaca at Roughly $1 Billion Valuation, Reports Say

Bumble is in advanced talks to be taken private by Ithaca Holdings in a deal valuing the dating-app operator at roughly $1 billion, Reuters reported on Monday, citing a source familiar with the matter, in a report the Wall Street Journal also carried, according to Barron's. The talks, if they end in a deal, would take a company that entered the market in 2021 at a $43 share price private at a small fraction of its debut value.

The buyer named in both reports is Ithaca Holdings, a holding company for technology businesses. Neither Bumble nor Ithaca responded to requests for comment on Monday, so the talks rest on anonymous sourcing in both reports: a source familiar with the matter in one account, and people familiar with the matter in the other. No agreement has been announced, no per-share price has been reported, and advanced talks can still end without a transaction.

A stock that repriced in a single session

Bumble shares closed around 50% higher on Monday at $3.80, according to the updated Reuters report, which called it the stock's biggest-ever percentage gain in a single session. Barron's, reporting during the session, put the move at 49% to $3.78 and likewise called it the largest percentage increase on record, citing Dow Jones Market Data. The company had a market value of roughly $389 million at Friday's close, so a valuation of roughly $1 billion in a take-private would be about two and a half times what the public market was paying on Friday.

Chief executive Whitney Wolfe Herd is expected to remain involved with the company if a deal proceeds, according to the Journal report carried by Barron's. That detail matters for how a buyer would frame the transaction: not as a break-up or a management replacement, but as a private restructuring of a business whose founder is still running it.

The business a buyer would be taking private

The operating backdrop explains both why Bumble is in play and why the price is what it is. In the second quarter ended June 30, total paying users fell 16.4% to 3.2 million. Across the full year 2025, paying users fell more than 11% to about 3.7 million, and annual revenue declined nearly 10% to about $966 million. The shares had fallen around 29% this year before Monday's jump, according to Reuters.

Bumble and its larger rival Match Group, which owns Tinder and Hinge, have both been squeezed as younger users tire of swipe-based dating and engagement softens across the category. Wolfe Herd, who founded Bumble in 2014 and built it around women making the first move, returned as chief executive in March 2025 after stepping down in January 2024. Her second stint has leaned on artificial-intelligence features and new ways for users to connect, and in August the company loosened its founding rule, allowing all users to send an opening message to a match. None of that has yet reversed the payer decline.

Reuters reported earlier this year that Bumble was exploring a sale, so Monday's talks did not arrive cold: they are the advanced stage of a process the market already knew existed. One analyst quoted in the Reuters report argued that going private would not by itself repair the underlying engagement problem, and that the company still needs to give users a reason to return and to pay. That skepticism is the honest counterweight to the share-price reaction: the market repriced the probability of a premium exit, not the health of the product.

From a $43 debut to a $1 billion conversation

Bumble went public in 2021 at an initial public offering price of $43 a share, with a market value of $7.94 billion at its debut, according to Dow Jones Market Data via Barron's. A take-private at roughly $1 billion would therefore close the public chapter at about an eighth of the debut market value, and the stock is still down about 26% over the past 12 months even after Monday's record gain, by the same Barron's account. For long-term holders, Monday's jump recovers a fraction of a much larger loss.

For Ithaca, whose founders are Ravi Gupta, a former Instacart finance chief, and John Hegeman, a former Meta revenue chief, Bumble would be a consumer-subscription turnaround run away from quarterly scrutiny: stabilize the payer base first, and rebuild the product without a public share price marking every step. That logic is inference from the reported facts, not a stated Ithaca plan — Ithaca has said nothing publicly.

What to watch next

The next facts that matter are formal ones: a definitive agreement or a company statement confirming or ending the talks, any per-share consideration and financing detail if a deal is signed, and Bumble's next payer and revenue prints if it stays public longer. Until one of those arrives, the story stays exactly what the sourcing says it is — advanced talks, reported by two outlets from anonymous sources, with no comment from either company and no signed deal.

A note on sourcing: the talks, the roughly $1 billion valuation, the share reaction, the payer and revenue figures, and the no-comment status come from a full read of the Reuters report published Monday. The Journal's parallel report, the buyer detail, the expectation that Wolfe Herd remains involved, and the debut figures come from a full read of the Barron's report published Monday. Both underlying reports rely on anonymous sources, and the article preserves that status throughout.