HedgeCo.Net — Bumble is in advanced talks to be taken private by Ithaca Holdings in a deal that would value the dating app operator at roughly $1 billion, according to a source familiar with the matter cited by Reuters on Monday. The Wall Street Journal reported that a deal could be announced as soon as this week. Neither Bumble nor Ithaca, a holding company for technology businesses founded by Silicon Valley executives Ravi Gupta and John Hegeman, commented on the reports, and no agreement has been announced.
The market reaction was immediate. Bumble shares closed about 50% higher on Monday at $3.80, the company’s largest one-day percentage gain on record, according to Reuters. The stock had carried a market value of roughly $389 million at Friday’s close, which means the reported price would represent a substantial premium to where public investors had been valuing the business only days earlier.
The talks follow a difficult stretch for the Austin, Texas-based company. Reuters reported earlier this year that Bumble was exploring a sale as growth in online dating slowed. Total paying users fell more than 11% to about 3.7 million in 2025, while annual revenue declined nearly 10% to about $966 million, and paying users dropped a further 16.4% to 3.2 million in the second quarter ended June 30. The company, which listed on the Nasdaq in 2021 at a valuation of about $14 billion, said in 2025 it would cut almost a third of its workforce.
For buyers of consumer internet assets, the setup is familiar: a recognized brand with meaningful revenue, a depressed public valuation, and an operating plan that may be easier to execute away from quarterly scrutiny. Founder and chief executive Whitney Wolfe Herd, who returned to the CEO role last year, has been rolling out AI-driven features and recently dropped the app’s signature rule that only women could start conversations. Skeptics remain; one analyst quoted by Reuters described a move to go private as closer to an admission that the current strategy is not working.
For allocators, the reported deal is another example of take-private activity reaching into battered mid-cap technology names, where buyers can underwrite cost and product changes against a revenue base that is shrinking but still large. Whether the transaction is signed, and at what final price, will offer a useful read on how private capital is valuing consumer subscription businesses that public markets have largely abandoned.