Deals, earnings, valuations and investor news from the dating business.
Thursday has shut its dating app and now runs in-person mixers in 150 cities, but has not disclosed event pricing, attendance or profitability.
Former F1 driver Alex Lynn has invested £100,000 in Pacer, a London sports matching app that says it is "not a dating app" but allows for romance.
Match Group hosts an investor session on 3 September on Tinder's product changes over the past 12 to 18 months, covering culture and testing cadence.
Appflame, which runs Taimi and Hily, targets 2 million DAUs for IPO readiness, up from approximately 350,000 DAUs, without venture capital.
Wedknott has acquired Aurezia Events to move from matchmaking into wedding planning in India's $130 billion wedding market. No terms were disclosed.
Matrimony.com's net profit rose 127.5% year-on-year to ₹19.1 crore (£1.4M) in Q1 fiscal 2027, as average transaction value grew 4.2%.
Bumble has ended its women-message-first rule after twelve years and extended its messaging window from 24 to 72 hours, citing Canadian testing.
Match Group's Hinge has launched audiobooks of real couples' origin stories on Spotify and Libby, with no data linking them to retention.
Grindr's Q2 2026 revenue rose 33% to $138.1M and net income reached $17.7M, but its AI product Edge is still in limited testing.
Tinder is testing a seven-day location-based Missed Connections feature in Canada and Australia. Match Group gave no data retention details.
Bumble is developing a new model beyond the swipe and backing Plans, after adding 200,000 paying users in Q2 2026, down from 400,000.
Hinge's Justin McLeod has raised $18M for an AI matchmaking startup, while Match Group research says nearly half of US singles view AI in dating negatively.
Tinder has partnered with events firm We Met In Real Life, starting with a New York event on Monday, according to founder Kacie Burns.
MaC Venture Capital's Marlon Nichols says most loneliness startups lack venture scale, though at least 18 have raised funding, per Business Insider.
IMARC Group forecasts UK dating industry revenue rising from $398M in 2025 to $749M by 2034, led by spend per user, with premium at over 60% of revenue.
Match Group's Q2 earnings are due this week, with Tinder revenue forecast at approximately $446M against $207M for Hinge, per Barron's.
Breeze has launched Group Dates nationwide after 500 London pilot events with 3,500 participants. Members meet six to 10 other singles at partner venues.
Tokyo's state-run dating app TOKYO Enmusubi reports 1.7% of verified users married within 21 months, a metric commercial apps do not publish.
Seattle matchmakers charge $7,500 to $50,000 per client, and Three Day Rule says its Seattle client base more than tripled last year.
Tinder's 'Dump Traditional Dating' campaign promotes its Double Date feature to Gen Z, as Match Group disclosed an 8% year-on-year subscriber decline.
Arya acquired couples app Flamme, which has more than 200,000 users, in a performance-based deal that closed within 30 days, the companies say.
Match Group's paying subscribers fell 5% in the quarter to 14.2 million, and it is adding group features and offline events to reach Gen Z.
Tinder is expanding Events to nine cities this month, with 26 targeted by September, after a March pilot in Los Angeles.
Info Edge names e-commerce veteran Chandni Gaglani to lead dating app Aisle, which has 30 million registered users and 500,000 monthly active users.
Tinder will pay $60.5M to settle a class action alleging it charged users over 30 approximately double the price paid by younger users.
Tinder has launched its first major rebrand in a decade, with a fictional advice columnist called "T", as paid subscribers fell 21% since 2022.
Tinder is presenting sponsor of the 2026 London E-Prix on 15-16 August at ExCeL London, its first motorsport deal, with no success metrics disclosed.
Match Group CEO Spencer Rascoff says Tinder's monthly active user decline has eased from roughly 12% to between 6% and 7%, helped by Double Date.
Match Group led an $18M seed round for Overtone, Justin McLeod's AI voice-based dating startup, which will not launch until late 2026.
Aisle, an Indian dating app, now refunds paid subscribers who get no "valid match" within 30 days. The offer is live on Android, with iOS to follow.
Fate, a London dating app with 10,000 installs, has launched Fate IRL speed dating events. The first two, on 18 and 21 July, have sold out.
Dating app SURF has expanded its HYROX partnership to Australia, letting users filter for HYROX singles, but it has shared no user metrics.
Enrise, Cupist and Triplecomma, Korea's three largest independent dating apps, have all launched in Japan as 70% of young Koreans shun dating apps.
Matrimony.com's Q1 billings rose 7.8% year-on-year to ₹13,603 lakhs ($16.3M), according to unaudited company figures.
Match Group has doubled its 2026 AI budget to $10 million and capped spending, while slowing hiring as it assesses AI's effect on staffing.
Wired alleges AI-generated Instagram accounts fuelled Goose's rise to No. 4 in the US App Store's free lifestyle category after its invite-only launch.
Match Group research finds 80% of Gen Z believe they will find true love, but only 25% of adults under 30 rank a relationship as their main goal.
Grindr shares jumped 16% after Morgan Stanley upgraded the stock to overweight, citing its product pipeline and expansion plans.
Coffee Meets Bagel, with $23M raised, sees rivals like Tinder and Hinge adopt its limited-match model. The story questions if that validation brings growth.
Hinge CEO Jackie Jantos says the app deliberately loses 20% of prospective users during onboarding, a strategy tied to its "great dates" metric.
A Gleeden-IPSOS survey found 66% of respondents across 12 major Indian cities have used AI chatbots for sexual health education.
Bumble has hired Morgan Stanley to explore a sale, Reuters reports, after its market capitalisation fell 95% to $388M from $7B at its IPO.
Tinder is launching 'Double Date Island', a TikTok-exclusive reality series with friend pairs from eight countries, filmed in Portugal.
MirrorMe, a Johannesburg invite-only dating app, charges up to R488 (£22) a month and recorded 557 downloads in its first 24 hours.
Rakuten Viber is rolling out dating features across Southeast Asia and Europe, but has not disclosed how it plans to monetise them.
Match Group is closing gay dating app Archer on 17 June, three years after launch, and has invested $100 million in Sniffies.
Hily has launched what it calls 'human intelligence' features, but its survey shows daters who distrust AI still use it.
A UK dating app launched in 2021 is up for sale with 25,000 registered users and 5,000 monthly actives, as the dating M&A market has contracted.
Match Group's BLK app is offering $500 gas gift cards to 10 users, and BLK says 77.6% of its users report financial stress around dating.
Breeze has launched group dating events in London for up to eight singles, with no pre-event messaging, as an alternative to app chat.
Financial covers the money in online dating: quarterly results from Match Group (MTCH), Bumble (BMBL) and Grindr (GRND), private-company accounts filed at Companies House, mergers and acquisitions, take-privates, funding rounds and investor moves. DII reports figures from the filings themselves, gives each number its period and source, and compares companies on the same basis. Every deal also goes into DII's deals tracker.