Bumble’s shares were worth less than $4 on Friday. On Tuesday the company agreed to be sold for $6.05 each.
The dating app maker said it will be acquired by Ithaca Holdings in an all-cash deal valued at $1.3 billion. Bumble will leave the stock market, about five years after it listed. Its shares rose 56% on Tuesday, according to CNBC.
The price and the premium
According to Global Dating Insights, the $6.05 offer is a 138% premium to Bumble’s closing price on October 9, the last session before takeover reports surfaced. It is also a 119% premium to the 30-day volume-weighted average price.
Bloomberg reported that the stock had already jumped 50% on Monday to close at $3.80, its best one-day gain since its February 2021 debut. That followed Bloomberg’s report that the two sides were in advanced talks. Early reports had pointed to a deal near $1 billion, MarketScreener noted. The final figure was higher.
MarketScreener put Bumble’s market value at $582 million at Monday’s close. At its 2021 debut the company was valued at roughly $14 billion.
Who is buying
Ithaca Holdings is a new firm. Bloomberg says it was founded this year by Ravi Gupta, a Sequoia Capital partner, and John Hegeman, a former chief revenue officer at Meta Platforms. Bloomberg reported in March that they planned to buy at least one public or private company and bring in new technology, potentially including AI.
Bumble is Ithaca’s first acquisition, according to the Dallas Morning News. Once the deal closes, Gupta and Hegeman will become co-CEOs. Founder Whitney Wolfe Herd, who returned as chief executive in March 2025, will stay actively involved, Global Dating Insights reported.
An independent committee of Bumble’s board reviewed the offer and recommended it. The board approved it unanimously, and Wolfe Herd did not take part in the discussions or vote. Affiliates of Blackstone and Wolfe Herd have already given the shareholder approval the deal requires. That means ordinary shareholders will not vote it down.
Bumble will keep its headquarters in Austin, with offices in London and New York.
Why a once-hot app is selling
TechCrunch described the sale as the end of a long slide, with subscriber numbers and revenue falling for years. The dating app business as a whole has struggled, according to the Dallas Morning News. Bumble, founded in 2014 on the idea that women make the first move, was once seen as one of the sector’s big successes.
Going private could let the company rework its product away from quarterly scrutiny, TechCrunch wrote. Whether that works is untested. The buyers have publicly cited AI and operating expertise, but the sources reviewed give no detail on specific product plans, job changes or how the deal is financed.
Ithaca’s co-founders called the purchase a bet on the future of humanity, the Dallas Morning News reported.
What it means for readers
For the app’s users, nothing changes immediately. The deal still has to close, and no completion date appeared in the sources reviewed.
For investors, the deal is a reminder of how far some 2021 listings have fallen. Anyone who bought at the IPO is still deeply underwater even at $6.05. Rival Match Group’s shares rose about 2% on the news, per MarketScreener.
The deal also shows that small, struggling public companies can attract buyers who think they can fix them privately. Those buyers pay a premium to get control. Public shareholders get one chance at that premium, and for Bumble’s holders it arrived in a single week.