Deals, earnings, valuations and investor news from the dating business.
Psychologists link a reported rise in young women attending Medieval Times to dating app burnout, though the evidence is largely anecdotal.
Thursday says it has hit a $50M valuation and opened a Series A, targeting $500M within five years, per a LinkedIn post by co-founder George Rawlings.
UK dating app usage has fallen 16% since 2024, with Tinder losing over 500,000 British users, as human matchmaking grows 8% annually.
TikTok follower growth for brands exceeded 200% year-on-year in 2025, while Instagram managed mid-single-digit median growth, according to Emplifi.
Saudi Arabia's dating app market made nearly $16M from 3.5 million downloads in the past year, with users paying for privacy and anonymity features.
Sumsub survey: 84% of UK dating app users say AI content makes matches harder to trust, up from 64%, with 67% now verifying matches themselves.
Ember Vision Ventures has launched a dating app capping users at a handful of AI-picked daily matches, positioning against the swiping model.
Snapchat+ has reached 25 million paying subscribers, Snap Inc. says, more than Tinder's estimated 10-12 million, with a $1 billion run rate.
Snapchat begins alpha testing Creator Subscriptions in the U.S. from 23rd February, at $4.99 to $19.99 monthly, with creators keeping approximately 60%.
Pinterest missed Q4 2025 revenue consensus with $1.32B against $1.33B, and shares fell 20% despite 619 million monthly active users.
DUA AG has acquired Vancouver dating app IRLY in an undisclosed all-cash deal, its second purchase after Spotted in 2022. IRLY gave no user or revenue data.
Pinterest reached 619 million monthly users and $1.3 billion in Q4 2025 revenue, and the story says dating apps should copy its "quiet AI" approach.
PositiveSingles has launched a lifetime membership tier aimed at celebrities and public figures, but gives no pricing or evidence of celebrity use.
TikTok launched Local Feed in the US on 11th February, a GPS opt-in feature for nearby venues and events that competes with dating apps' discovery tools.
Grindr is piloting an AI subscription tier called EDGE at up to $499 per month, with randomised pricing, in Australia and New Zealand first.
Breeze has partnered with ride-hailing platform Bolt to offer 40% off a first trip to a date, and a nine-point safety guide, as it expands beyond matching.
Snap Inc. reported 24 million paid subscribers in Q4 2025, up 71%, as daily active users fell to 474 million, raising pressure on dating apps.
ParshipMeet Group appoints Justin Zinck, formerly Senior Director Finance at HelloFresh, as CFO from February 2026.
Tinder is testing its AI Chemistry feature in Australia, offering one or two curated matches per session as monthly active users fell 9% in Q4 2025.
Kinsey Institute's Dr. Justin Garcia argues dating apps clash with human courtship, and Bumble's premium ARPU grew just 3% year-over-year in Q1 2024.
Ditto, an iMessage-only dating service, raised $9.2M in seed funding and claims 42,000 users across five California universities.
PURE dating app reports $100M in 2025 gross revenue, up 46%, but has never disclosed user numbers, so its growth cannot be independently verified.
UpScrolled grew from 150,000 to 2.5 million users in four weeks, founder Issam Hijazi said, but daily actives fell to 68,000 from a 138,500 peak.
Bethenny Frankel's The Core, with memberships reportedly reaching $1,200 a year, is struggling to attract subscribers, according to unnamed sources.
Flutrr has partnered with Saregama to launch music-based matching as a paid premium tier, letting subscribers match on musical taste, not photos.
Microsoft dropped 'record levels of engagement' from LinkedIn's Q4 earnings for the first time since 2018, as quarterly revenue hit $5 billion.
Meta's Q4 2025 ad revenue of $59.89 billion is raising customer acquisition costs for dating apps that rely on its platforms, the analysis argues.
Left Field, an app limiting users to two matches per week, raised £156,000 ($200,000) from Kendra Scott and Alexis Ohanian on Shark Tank.
Thursday has partnered with Pepsi UK for a branded singles event on 12 February 2026, with over 200 attendees expected at The Ministry in Borough.
Vybes reports an eightfold rise in weekly downloads after launching YouTube dating series Vybes Villa on 12 January, and claims 60% conversion.
TikTok's new U.S. joint venture will retrain its algorithm on U.S. user data only, putting dating brands' TikTok marketing strategies in doubt.
Match Group says 80% of Gen Z believe they'll find lasting love but only 55% feel ready now, a gap it calls the 'readiness paradox'.
Meta is rolling out Threads ads globally from 26 January 2026, giving dating brands a new channel that runs through existing Meta campaigns.
TikTok's extension expires 23 January 2026 with no final approval of the Oracle-led deal, putting dating apps' key Gen Z acquisition channel at risk.
Spark Networks Services GmbH, the business behind Zoosk and Christian Mingle, filed for preliminary insolvency in Berlin on 16 January.
Info Edge put ₹10 crore into dating app Aisle via Jeevansathi Internet Services, as Aisle posted a ₹17.80 crore net loss in FY25.
Love Group Global posted $369,000 net operating cash flow in Q2 FY2026, a record for the Hong Kong and Singapore matchmaker, after a $1.8M FY2025 net loss.
Bluesky added cashtags and Live Now badges but still lacks image DMs, while US daily iOS installs reached 29,000 by mid-January, per Appfigures.
Event app Partiful launched Crush in select US markets in late December, letting users anonymously mark up to 10 'Mutuals' as romantic interests.
Hinge was Match Group's second-largest revenue contributor by Q3 2024, but Match has not disclosed Hinge deletion rates or retention data.
Match Group's Her launched "The Sapphic Restart", a campaign promoting slow dating. Her says 68% of surveyed users are slowly returning to dating.
Dating Options, a Warwickshire matchmaker, reported £2.19M in 2025 revenue and claims 2,222 new relationships, with no third-party verification.
Like Love, which has run in-person singles events for 12 months, plans a dating app but declined to share user or revenue figures.
Instagram has expanded manual Reels algorithm controls to all English-speaking users, a test case for dating apps weighing algorithm transparency.
Nearly 40% of Gen Z users begin searches on Pinterest, not Google, a shift that challenges algorithm-driven dating apps.
TikTok has added six Channel Sales Partners to its Marketing Partners Programme, which could help smaller dating apps test paid campaigns.
TikTok launched a printable weekly planner for families on screen time, which the analysis says dating apps could copy to answer regulators.
Indian matchmaker WedKnott raised funding from blockchain entrepreneur Pratik Gauri to expand into Dubai and London.
TikTok is FIFA's first-ever 'Preferred Platform' for the 2026 World Cup, from 11 June to 19 July, which could raise ad costs for dating apps.
WedKnott, an Indian matchmaking platform, has secured undisclosed investment from Pratik Gauri to expand into Dubai and London.
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.