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Bumble is rebuilding its app on a new platform, and the visible relaunch is now due in early 2027. In August 2026 its chief executive, Whitney Wolfe Herd, said the company was porting core features to a new technology stack and moving critical data from its own data centres onto cloud infrastructure, and that this had taken a couple of months longer than expected [4]. As a result, Bumble now expects to begin rolling out its new way of matching, which moves away from the swipe, in "very early 2027" [4]. Two months later, on 13 October 2026, Bumble announced it had agreed to be taken private by Ithaca Holdings for $6.05 a share in cash [1].
So the relaunch will happen under new owners, after a period in which the Bumble app lost about a quarter of its paying members [3][7].
What Bumble has said about the rebuild
Bumble's own descriptions of the work have become more specific over 18 months.
- In June 2025 it cut about 240 roles, around 30% of staff, and said it would reinvest most of the expected savings of up to $40 million a year in "product and technology development" [8].
- In August 2025 Wolfe Herd spoke of "accelerating innovation across AI, product, and technology" and of a member base with "higher quality and more intentional members" [10].
- On the call for the fourth quarter of 2025, in March 2026, management described a move from its legacy systems to a cloud-based platform it called Tech Stack 2.0, targeted for the second quarter of 2026, and flagged duplicate costs in 2026 from running old data centres alongside the new cloud set-up [6].
- In May 2026 Wolfe Herd said Bumble would launch "a fully reimagined Bumble experience on our rebuilt, AI-enabled platform later this year" [5].
- In August 2026 she said the old recommendation engine meant "it could have taken us months to make very marginal changes", and that once fully migrated Bumble would be able to ship products faster than ever [4].
The March 2026 detail comes from a summary of the call, not a transcript, so treat the exact wording with care [6].
Dated timeline
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| 17 January 2025 | Bumble says Whitney Wolfe Herd will return as CEO from mid-March 2025, succeeding Lidiane Jones [9] |
| 23 to 25 June 2025 | Board approves cutting about 240 roles, around 30% of staff; savings to go mainly into product and technology [8] |
| September 2025 | Bumble For Friends relaunched as BFF in the US [11] |
| 11 March 2026 | Q4 2025 results; new cloud platform targeted for Q2 2026, with duplicate data centre costs during 2026 [6][7] |
| 5 May 2026 | Q1 2026 results; "fully reimagined" Bumble promised "later this year" [5] |
| 5 August 2026 | Q2 2026 call; data migration delayed by a couple of months; new interaction model to roll out in "very early 2027" [4] |
| 12 October 2026 | Merger agreement with Ithaca signed [2] |
| 13 October 2026 | Deal announced; majority holders approve by written consent; no Q3 release or call [1] |
| By 9 November 2026 | Q3 2026 Form 10-Q due [1] |
| 12 July 2027 | End date in the merger agreement [2] |
Source: Bumble Inc filings and results [1][2][5][7][8][9][11], call transcript [4] and call summary [6].
The paying member decline
The Bumble app had 2.81 million paying members in the fourth quarter of 2024 and 2.08 million in the second quarter of 2026 [7][3]. That is a fall of 26% on our calculation [3][7]. Bumble Inc as a whole, including Badoo, fell from 4.18 million to 3.16 million over the same period [7][3].
| Quarter | Bumble app paying members | Bumble app revenue |
|---|---|---|
| Q4 2024 | 2,812.6k | $212.4m |
| Q1 2025 | 2,708.4k | $201.8m |
| Q2 2025 | 2,499.8k | $201.4m |
| Q3 2025 | 2,344.1k | $198.8m |
| Q4 2025 | 2,185.2k | $181.0m |
| Q1 2026 | 2,082.0k | $172.7m |
| Q2 2026 | 2,077.1k | $171.7m |
Source: Bumble Inc results [3][5][7][11]. Paying members are monthly averages for the quarter.
Part of this was deliberate. Bumble has said it was working to improve the quality of its member base, expected that work to create near-term headwinds, and kept marketing well below historical levels through the second quarter of 2026 [4][11]. The decline also slowed sharply in 2026: the Bumble app lost about 5,000 paying members between the first and second quarters, against about 160,000 between the third and fourth quarters of 2025 [3][5][7]. Revenue per payer rose over the period, which kept revenue falling more slowly than payers: the Bumble app's monthly average revenue per paying member was $27.55 in the second quarter of 2026, against $26.85 a year earlier [3].
The Ithaca Holdings deal
The terms, from Bumble's announcement and its Form 8-K:
- Price: $6.05 a share in cash for Class A shares, a premium of about 138% to the unaffected close on 9 October 2026 and about 119% to the 30-day average price, valuing Bumble at about $1.3 billion [1].
- Buyer: Ithaca Holdco, which describes itself as a holding company for market-leading technology businesses. Its co-founders and co-CEOs, Ravi Gupta and John Hegeman, will become Bumble's co-CEOs at closing [1][2].
- Approval: affiliates of Blackstone and Wolfe Herd approved the deal by written consent, so no further shareholder vote is needed [1][2].
- Rollover: Wolfe Herd and Beehive Holdings III, LP signed a rollover agreement to swap Class A shares for equity in the new parent company rather than take cash [2].
- Financing: no financing condition; an equity commitment letter from Greenoaks Prime Radiant LP [2].
- Break fees: $29 million payable by Bumble and $102 million by Ithaca in specified circumstances [2].
- Conditions and timing: US antitrust clearance and other approvals, an information statement to shareholders, and an end date of 12 July 2027 [2].
Wolfe Herd recused herself from the board's vote and said she will "remain actively involved with Bumble" [1]. Ithaca says its mission is to "apply frontier technology to renew and accelerate businesses" [1].
Questions
When is Bumble relaunching?
On its August 2026 call Bumble said it would start shipping product improvements to close out 2026 and begin rolling out its new way of matching in very early 2027, after a delay in moving data to the cloud.
Who is buying Bumble?
Ithaca Holdings, a holding company for technology businesses. It agreed to pay $6.05 a share in cash, valuing Bumble at about $1.3 billion.
Why is Bumble's relaunch delayed?
Bumble said moving critical data from its own data centres to cloud infrastructure took longer than expected because of the volume and complexity of the data, delaying the work by a couple of months.
How many paying members has Bumble lost?
The Bumble app had 2.08 million paying members in the second quarter of 2026, against 2.81 million in the fourth quarter of 2024, a fall of 26% on our calculation.
