Bumble agreed on Tuesday to be acquired by Ithaca Holdings for $1.3 billion, taking the dating app company private five years after it listed on the Nasdaq.
Under the deal, holders of Bumble stock will receive $6.05 a share, about 138 percent above the closing price on Oct. 9, both companies said in a joint announcement. Mashable reported that Bumble was valued at $14 billion when it went public in February 2021.
Ithaca is a newly formed holding company. Its co-founders and co-CEOs, Ravi Gupta, a former Instacart chief operating officer, and John Hegeman, a former Meta chief revenue officer, will become co-CEOs of Bumble, according to the announcement. Whitney Wolfe Herd, who founded Bumble in 2014 around the idea that women message first, will leave the CEO role she returned to last year after stepping down in 2024.
Wolfe Herd said Ithaca "believes in our women-first mission." She added that the buyer is committed to investing in Bumble's future.
Gizmodo reported that the deal caps a long slide for Bumble, whose shares have traded far below their listing price as revenue, paying users and downloads fell. The company has tried to widen its appeal beyond dating, adding Bumble for friends and professional networking, and earlier this year dropped the rule that only women could send the first message.
The wider market has cooled too. A Harris Poll survey published in February found that about two-thirds of singles said they were not setting up dating profiles, calling the platforms too transactional.
Bumble shares had fallen about 96 percent from their IPO level before the deal was announced, Mashable reported.