Bumble sold to Ithaca Holdings for $1.3 billion: what changes for members

Bumble is being sold. On Tuesday 13 October, Bumble Inc., the Austin company behind Bumble, Badoo, Fruitz and Official, announced a definitive agreement to be acquired by Ithaca Holdings in an all-cash transaction that values the company at about $1.3 billion, or $6.05 for each Class A share. The buyer is a holding company formed less than a year ago, the founder stays on, and the stock leaves Nasdaq once the deal closes. This page sets out the terms, who the buyers are, how a company worth about $14 billion on its first day of trading became a $1.3 billion sale, what the rest of the dating-app market is doing, and what the deal does and does not change for people who use Bumble or Badoo or have been blocked by either. If you are mid-appeal, no route has changed, and the tiers are on the pricing page.

AppealMyBan is an independent service. Not affiliated with, or endorsed by, Bumble Inc., Ithaca Holdings, Blackstone or any company named below. Nothing here is investment advice.

Every figure on this page is from Bumble’s filing of 13 October, its quarterly results, or a named report, each linked where it is used and read on 14 and 15 October. Where reports disagree, both numbers are given.

The deal, term by term

The agreement was announced before the market opened on Tuesday, in a press release filed with the SEC and on Bumble’s investor site. The Form 8-K filed the same day carries the merger agreement. These are its terms.

How it reached the market tells you something about the price. On Monday 12 October the Wall Street Journal reported advanced talks at a valuation of about $1 billion, Bloomberg and Reuters followed, trading was briefly halted, and the shares closed up about 50% at $3.80. On Tuesday the signed deal came in at $1.3 billion and the shares closed at $5.95, up 56.6% on the day and 134% since the Friday close, by the Ortex tally, about 1.7% below the offer. Merger-arbitrage notes such as New Moon call that a narrow spread, which is the market saying it expects the deal to close.

Two numbers float around for the premium. The filing measures 138% against the Friday close. Reuters, which first reported on 25 June 2026 that Bumble had hired Morgan Stanley to explore a sale, measures 122.4% against the close on 24 June, the day before that report. Both are right about their own baseline. Bumble’s market value at the Friday close was put at $335 million by the Journal and at $389 million by Reuters, which count different share classes. Divide $1.3 billion by $6.05 and you get about 215 million shares, units and awards being paid or rolled at that price, which is why the headline figure sits so far above either market value even after the premium.

One more fact explains why no vote is needed. Bumble’s charter gives ten votes a share to stock held by Wolfe Herd and Blackstone and one vote to everyone else, an arrangement a shareholder challenged and Delaware’s Court of Chancery upheld. The two holders who control the vote are the two who agreed the price. At least three law firms, Ademi LLP, Kahn Swick & Foti and Bleichmar Fonti & Auld, announced investigations into whether $6.05 is fair within hours of the announcement. That is routine after any take-private, and it rarely changes the price.

Who Ithaca Holdings is

Ithaca Holdings calls itself “the long-term holding company for enduring technology businesses”. It is new. Instacart’s biography of Ravi Gupta lists him as co-chief executive of Ithaca Holdco since December 2025, and most reports date the firm’s public launch to March 2026. Its stated mission, in the deal release, is “to apply frontier technology to renew and accelerate businesses that enrich people’s lives”. Bumble is its first acquisition. It is not the Ithaca Holdings that Scooter Braun built around Big Machine and sold to HYBE in 2021; the two share a name and nothing else.

Gupta has been a partner at Sequoia Capital since 2019, was Instacart’s chief financial officer and chief operating officer from 2015 to 2019, spent a decade at KKR before that and started at McKinsey. He sits on Instacart’s board and has been its lead independent director since August 2025. Hegeman spent 17 years at Meta, helped build its advertising engine and was its chief revenue officer until he left in November 2025 to start a company, which Bloomberg first reported at the time without naming it. Ithaca is that company. Its equity comes from Greenoaks Prime Radiant LP, a vehicle of the investor Greenoaks; the 8-K confirms the commitment letter but not the amount.

Their thesis is the interesting part of the announcement. In a post on X on the day of the deal, Gupta wrote that Ithaca had spent six months looking at hundreds of companies and asking which would become more valuable as AI advances, and that Bumble stood out: “As intelligence becomes more abundant, we believe connecting with the right person and forming meaningful relationships will become even more precious.” The joint statement from the two co-CEOs put it this way: “Technology should work in service of our deepest source of fulfillment, human connection, and this investment is a bet on the future of humanity.” The BBC ran its headline on that phrase and priced the deal at £980 million.

Wolfe Herd, who founded Bumble in 2014 and did not take part in the board’s discussions or vote, said the company had chosen a partner that “believes in our women-first mission”, and that “that is why I will remain actively involved with Bumble”. Inc. noted the obvious: both incoming co-CEOs are men, and keeping the founder visible is how a buyer tells 3 million paying members that the brand has not changed hands in spirit. Her title after closing has not been announced.

How a $14 billion company became a $1.3 billion sale

What Bumble has been worth, in billions of dollars

November 2019Blackstone buys control of the parent

$3bn

February 2021First day on Nasdaq, most reports

$14bn

9 OctoberMarket value at the Friday close

$0.34bn

13 OctoberThe price Ithaca pays

$1.3bn

Bumble launched in December 2014 with Andrey Andreev, the founder of Badoo, as its majority owner. In November 2019 Blackstone bought Andreev’s controlling stake in MagicLab, the parent of both apps, at a valuation of about $3 billion, after a Forbes investigation into the culture of Badoo’s London office. Andreev left and Wolfe Herd became chief executive of the group, as CNN reported at the time. Fifteen months later, on 11 February 2021, Bumble Inc. listed on Nasdaq at $43 a share, opened near $76 and closed its first day at $70.31, which Fortune recorded as the most money ever left on the table in an IPO relative to market value. Most reports put the first-day valuation at $13 billion to $14 billion. Wolfe Herd, then 31, became the youngest woman to take a US company public.

The slide was long rather than sudden. In March 2023 Blackstone and Wolfe Herd sold 13.75 million shares at $22.80. In late 2023 Wolfe Herd handed the chief executive role to Lidiane Jones, formerly of Slack, from January 2024. Jones cut about 350 jobs in February 2024, said in March that the women-message-first rule “feels like a burden for a subset of our customers today”, and relaunched the app in April 2024 with Opening Moves, which let women pre-set a question that any match could answer. Fortune counted the shares down about 54% from that relaunch to the end of 2024. Jones resigned in January 2025 and Wolfe Herd returned as chief executive in mid-March, telling members that “Bumble is being rebuilt”. In June 2025 she cut about 30% of the staff, roughly 240 roles, for savings of about $40 million a year, and reportedly ordered the app rewritten from scratch under the name Bumble 2.0, off a stack whose oldest parts dated back to Badoo in 2005.

The numbers kept falling while the rebuild went on. For 2025 Bumble reported revenue of $965.7 million, down 9.9%, 3.7 million paying users, down 11.5%, and a net loss of $906.6 million that included $1,039.0 million of non-cash impairment charges, with adjusted EBITDA of $313.6 million. In April 2026 it refinanced with a $475 million term loan priced at SOFR plus 8%, which was costing 11.62% at 30 June. On 25 June Reuters reported the Morgan Stanley mandate, with the market value then at $388 million. On 11 August Bumble ended the women-message-first rule for straight matches altogether and stretched the reply window from 24 to 72 hours, citing its own survey in which 66% of women said they would rather men sent the first message. Wolfe Herd’s line was that “being women-first was never about prescribing just one way to connect”. Nine weeks later the company was sold.

Bumble Inc. paying users by quarter, in millions

1m

2m

3m

4m

4.0m

3.16m

Q1 2025

Q2 2025

Q3 2025

Q4 2025

Q1 2026

Q2 2026

Revenue for the first three quarters of 2025 and the first two of 2026 is as reported in each quarter’s release; the fourth quarter of 2025 is the full-year figure less the three reported quarters. The second-quarter 2026 release, the last before the sale, reported a net loss of $127.9 million after a $169.3 million impairment, adjusted EBITDA of $72.9 million at a 34.6% margin, and average revenue per paying user up 1.2% to $21.96. Management described the declines as the final stages of a reset of the member base towards quality, and said a reimagined app on the rebuilt platform would arrive later this year. Before the deal, the analyst consensus was Hold with a mean target of $3.72, which Barchart noted was well below the price Ithaca paid, and about 12.9% of the free float was sold short.

Blackstone’s arithmetic closes the loop. It bought control at a $3 billion valuation, took the company public at about four times that, sold stock at $22.80 in 2023 and placed more at about $6.50 in 2025, and leaves at $6.05 with a stake reported at 14.1% of the shares at 30 September and at about 22% in June by LSEG data, the difference being which classes are counted. Private Equity Insights headlined the deal as Blackstone heading for the exit. For Wolfe Herd, who the Journal said would roll at least part of her stake, the sale is a bet alongside the buyers rather than a cash exit.

The reset the headlines mean

TechCrunch ran the news under the line “as online dating faces a reset”, and the figures from the rest of the industry explain the phrase. Match Group, which owns Tinder and Hinge, reported second-quarter 2026 revenue of $853 million, down 1%, and 13.3 million payers, down 6%. Inside that total Tinder’s payers fell 5% to 8.5 million while its daily active users were down only 4%, which chief executive Spencer Rascoff presents as a turnaround under way, and Hinge’s payers rose 17% to about 2.0 million with direct revenue up 22% to $203.5 million, towards a stated target of $1 billion a year by 2027. Grindr reported revenue up 33% to about $138 million and 1.4 million paying users, and raised its 2026 guidance to about $540 million. The category is not dying. It is sorting itself into apps that are growing and apps that are not, and Bumble’s 16% fall in payers put it on the wrong side of that line, next to Tinder’s 5%.

The demand side has cooled for everyone. Fortune, citing Business of Apps, reports that global dating-app downloads have fallen for six straight years since a 2019 peak and that category revenue slipped for the first time in 2025, to about $6.07 billion. A Forbes Health survey of 1,000 American app users in 2024 found 78% reporting burnout, 79% among Gen Z and 80% among millennials, and a Clarity Check study of nearly 9,000 people in July 2026 found 58% had deleted a dating app because it was “emotionally draining”, according to Fortune’s August report on Gen Z and swiping.

The apps’ answer, across the board, is to get people off the apps. Tinder’s Events feature has reached 20 cities and, by its own figures, 71% of its Gen Z users in Los Angeles have visited it since March. Bumble piloted Plans, paid small-group meet-ups with an RSVP fee, in New York in June, has taken over bars for singles mixers, and ran a rooftop party in Nashville, as CNN and Fortune both reported in September. Breeze, 222, Timeleft and Thursday sell the in-person evening and little else. On the product side, Bumble launched an AI assistant called Bee in March 2026, TechCrunch reported, whose first job is a feature called Dates that interviews you privately and proposes two people. Wolfe Herd said in May that the swipe itself is being replaced, with the new experience expected in selected markets in the fourth quarter. And this week Bumble added Handles, searchable usernames for US iPhone users, which Fast Company described as the first time a dating profile can be found by search, with mutual interest still required before any message.

Read Ithaca’s thesis against that backdrop and the deal makes sense on its own terms. Gupta is betting that as AI makes conversation and matching cheap, the scarce thing becomes a real person who wants to meet you, and that a company with 3 million paying members and a known brand is the right place to own that. Hegeman spent 17 years making Facebook’s ranking and advertising systems pay. The owners who take over Bumble have said they intend to run it with more automation, not less. For members that cuts both ways, and the next section is about the side nobody asked about on the earnings call.

What changes for Bumble and Badoo members, and when

The honest answer for today is: nothing. The agreement is signed, not closed. Until closing Bumble Inc. runs itself under the same management, the same Terms and the same policies, and the apps are unchanged. The table separates what is true now from what can change after closing.

A take-private changes what the public can see more than what members experience. The quarterly releases that produced every number on this page end at closing, and so do the earnings calls where management is asked about paying users. What does not end is the reporting the EU requires. The Digital Services Act obliges Bumble and Badoo to send a statement of reasons for every account decision affecting an EU member and to file a copy to the Commission’s transparency database, whoever owns them. In our own count of the daily files, Bumble filed 174,341 decisions and 2,859 account terminations between 31 July and 28 September, and Badoo 419,214 decisions and 22,848 terminations between 30 July and 28 September. For 2025 Bumble’s own report records 26,318 appeals against account suspensions or terminations and 2,419 reversed, 9.2%, at a median of about four hours; Badoo records 127,648 appeals and 9,422 granted, 7.4%. Those duties and those figures will be the first public sign of whether moderation changes under new ownership.

Four things are worth watching, in order of how soon they could arrive.

1. An email about new Terms. Section 15 of the current Terms sends disputes to arbitration with National Arbitration and Mediation, or ADR Services in California, and allows an opt-out only within 31 days of first becoming subject to the agreement, adding that “updates to Bumble’s Terms do not provide a new opportunity for you to opt out”. Read any new version for that section, for section 1 on appeals, and for the entities in section 19.
2. Changes to the public dispute form. Bumble’s appeal is the form linked in the block notification, with the public “Dispute my block or warning” form as the fallback. If either moves or changes, the six-month window does not.
3. The moderation systems themselves. Bumble says its Deception Detector, launched in February 2024, blocked 95% of spam and scam accounts automatically in its testing. In its 2025 EU report roughly 636,827 of about 739,365 visibility restrictions were applied by automated systems. A buyer that intends to apply frontier AI will touch these systems first, and the DSA figures for 2026, due in 2027, will show what that did to appeals.
4. The 2026 transparency report. It will be the first to cover a period under new owners, and it is the only public measure left once the quarterly numbers stop.

Regulators do not change with the owner either. In 2024 the New Jersey Attorney General took a $315,000 civil penalty from Bumble Inc. over its disclosure of criminal background screening on Bumble and Badoo, and the FTC’s 2025 order against Match Group, a different company, bars retaliating against users who dispute a charge. Both routes stay open to a member of a private Bumble exactly as they were open to a member of a public one.

If you are blocked on Bumble or Badoo right now

The deal does not pause, extend or reset anything about your case, so treat it as noise and work the routes that exist.

• The window is six months from the decision, under section 1 of Bumble’s Terms, and the appeal is the form linked in your block notification. If the notification is gone, the public “Dispute my block or warning” form takes the same appeal without a login. Send it once, and keep it civil. Bumble blocked your account: the appeal, the money, the referee walks through the form, and how to get unbanned from Bumble sets the odds from Bumble’s own figures.
• Keep the notice. Screenshot the block screen and any email, with the date. The entity to address in the United States is Bumble Trading LLC, and that does not change at closing.
• Ask for your record. An access request under the GDPR, the UK GDPR or the CCPA obliges Bumble to give you the personal data it holds about the decision, within one month in Europe. The duty attaches to the company and transfers with it. Ask for access before you ask for anything to be deleted; GDPR erasure requests to dating apps explains why the order matters.
• In the EU, ask for the statement of reasons Article 17 of the Digital Services Act requires, and consider a certified dispute body under Article 21 where one names Bumble or Badoo. Banned from Bumble for no reason shows what Bumble tells the Commission it ends accounts for, and why is my Badoo account blocked does the same for Badoo.
• Do not open a new account. Bumble’s rules bar it, and its systems tie a new account to an old decision through the phone number, payment details, device and face it already holds. Do not pay anyone who promises an outcome: only Bumble decides a block, under any owner.

The app pages for Bumble and Badoo carry the routes in order, and the free check takes about two minutes.

What AppealMyBan files for a Bumble or Badoo block

1. We read what Bumble told you. The ground it named, the date, and whether a statement of reasons arrived.
2. We write the appeal you send, inside the six-month window, answering the ground named rather than the one you fear.
3. We file what a third party may file, in your name, under a signed authority, copying you the moment it goes: the access request for the enforcement record, the statement-of-reasons request in the EU, a certified dispute body where one covers the app, and a regulator complaint if a deadline is ignored.
4. We answer what comes back. The Case is $149: every route found, drafted and filed, and every reply answered for 60 days. The Advocate is $349 and covers up to four apps from the same company, so Badoo as well as Bumble.

We are not a law firm and do not give legal advice. We never ask for a password. The free check takes about two minutes.

Where each figure on this page comes from

• Deal terms. Bumble’s press release of 13 October and the Form 8-K carrying the merger agreement, read 14 October; the adviser list from the release and from Kirkland & Ellis; the fee and escrow terms as summarised by Law360 and the 8-K.
• Share prices and market reaction. Bloomberg, Reuters as carried by KSL, 24/7 Wall St, The Motley Fool, Fast Company, Gizmodo, The Dallas Morning News, Newser and Global Dating Insights, all read 14 and 15 October.
• Bumble’s results. The releases for the second quarter of 2026, the first quarter of 2026, the fourth quarter and full year 2025, the third quarter of 2025 and the second quarter of 2025, with debt and the loan terms from the 10-K for 2025 and the 10-Q for 30 June 2026.
• History. CNN and Forbes on the 2019 Blackstone deal; Fortune on the IPO; Bumble’s 2023 secondary offering and Sherwood on the 2025 sell-down; TechCrunch on the 2024 and 2025 job cuts; Fortune and TechCrunch on the end of the women-first rule; Reuters as carried by AOL on the June sale process.
• The market. Match Group’s second-quarter 2026 release, Grindr’s second-quarter 2026 release, Fortune’s reports of 20 September and 14 August, CNN and the Forbes Health survey.
• Members. Bumble’s Terms, version of 17 June 2026, read on 17 September; Bumble’s and Badoo’s 2025 EU transparency reports; our own counts of their daily files in the DSA Transparency Database, read on 30 September. The two charts plot the valuation and paying-user figures given in the text, and the table under the second chart carries every value.

Questions people actually ask

Who is buying Bumble?

Ithaca Holdings, a holding company founded by Ravi Gupta, a Sequoia Capital partner and former Instacart chief financial officer, and John Hegeman, Meta’s former chief revenue officer, with equity from Greenoaks. The two founders become Bumble’s co-chief executives when the deal closes.

How much is Bumble being sold for?

$6.05 in cash for each Class A share, in a transaction the companies value at about $1.3 billion. That is about 138% above the closing price of about $2.54 on 9 October, and roughly a tenth of the $13 billion to $14 billion the company was worth on its first day of trading in February 2021.

Is Bumble shutting down?

No. Bumble is being bought, not closed. The company says it will keep its Austin headquarters and its London and New York offices, the apps keep running, and the founder stays involved. What ends is the stock market listing.

When will the Bumble sale close?

No date has been given. The remaining steps are US antitrust clearance and an information statement to shareholders with a 20-day wait, because the two controlling holders have already consented in writing. Either side can walk away if the deal has not closed by 12 July 2027.

Does the Bumble sale change my subscription?

Not on the day of the announcement. Subscriptions bought through Apple or Google are managed in those stores as before, and Bumble has announced no change to prices or plans. Any change to the Terms would be notified to you by email and in the app.

Does the sale affect a Bumble block or ban appeal?

No. The appeal is still the form linked in your block notification, within six months of the decision, and the public “Dispute my block or warning” form is still the fallback. An access request for your data, and in the EU a statement of reasons, are open under any owner.

What happens to Badoo after the Bumble sale?

Badoo is part of Bumble Inc., so it is included in the sale, as are Fruitz and Official. Nothing has been announced about any single app. Badoo’s own appeal route and its EU reporting duties are unchanged.

Why did Bumble go private?

Its paying users fell from 4.0 million in early 2025 to 3.16 million by mid-2026 and revenue fell with them, the shares had lost more than 90% of their value since 2021, and the board had been exploring a sale since at least June 2026. The buyers say they want to rebuild the business around AI, away from the quarterly scrutiny of public markets.