• Seven Blackstone-controlled holding entities sold 2,763,510 Bumble Class A shares at $3.5423 each on 13 October 2026, roughly $9.79M by DII's calculation.
  • The sale was a post-paid forward with an unaffiliated bank, adopted under Rule 10b5-1 on 26 November 2025, not an open-market trade.
  • The Form 4 balances add up to about 15.9M shares still held, so the '99.5% cut' circulating online is not a measure of the stake.
  • Bumble announced its $6.05-a-share sale to Ithaca Holdings the same day.

Seven holding vehicles controlled by Blackstone sold a combined 2,763,510 Class A shares in Bumble (BMBL) at $3.5423 on 13 October, according to a Form 4 signed on 14 October. That is about $9.79M, a figure DII has calculated; the filing does not state it. The same day, Bumble agreed a $1.3B all-cash sale at $6.05 a share, covered in our earlier report.

A Markets Daily item attributes the entire sale to BX Buzz ML-1 GP LLC and describes a 99.51% cut. The filing says otherwise.

The DII Take

This is a scheduled, pre-arranged monetisation, not a dramatic exit. The 99.5% line is an artefact of reading one vehicle's balance as the whole position. The gap between $3.5423 and $6.05 reflects a price averaged over a hedging period that ran mostly before the deal was announced, although the filing does not give the start date of that period.

What the Form 4 actually shows

ML-1 sold 67,021 shares. The largest sellers were ML-5 with 1,211,827 and ML-2 with 922,164. The 13,733 shares and the 99.51% decrease cited by Markets Daily relate to ML-7, which sold 2,387 shares and kept 13,733. Adding the seven post-sale balances gives 15,901,210 shares still reported as held indirectly.

Seven Blackstone-controlled Bumble holding entities sold a combined 2,763,510 Class A shares at $3.5423 each on 13 October 2026.

Footnote 1 says the shares went to an unaffiliated financial institution at a price based on the volume-weighted average price over its hedging period. The price was fixed on 13 October, when that period ended. The bank is not named.

What to watch

A Form 4 for 28 September reported seven sales totalling 3,767,776 shares at $2.9381 under a similar post-paid forward, though that filing's 10b5-1 box is not ticked. The 13 October sale was therefore the second of its kind in about two weeks. Bumble says Blackstone affiliates approved the Ithaca deal by written consent, but DII has not seen anything confirming what happens to the remaining shares. Bumble plans to file its 10-Q by 9 November and has said it will not hold a Q3 call.

  • Blackstone's 13 October Bumble sale was a forward settlement fixed at a volume-weighted price, so $3.5423 says little about what Blackstone expects from the $6.05 deal.
  • Anyone sizing Blackstone's exposure should use the roughly 15.9M shares still reported, not the 13,733 figure circulating online.
  • The information statement to Bumble shareholders and the November 10-Q are the next places to look for detail on remaining holdings.

Sources: Bumble Inc. Form 4, period of report 2026-10-13 (SEC EDGAR); Bumble Inc. Form 4, period of report 2026-09-28 (SEC EDGAR); Bumble Inc. to Be Acquired by Ithaca Holdings (Bumble Inc. / Business Wire); Bumble major shareholder Bx Buzz Ml-1 Gp Llc sells 2,763,510 shares (Markets Daily)