OPW – In 2025, we selected and summarized over 600 of the top news items mentioning 212 companies from the online dating industry. Tinder took the top spot, followed by Match Group and Hinge. Here’s the full list of dating companies that received the most press coverage last year:
1. Tinder (85 posts)
Tinder spent 2025 wrestling with a prolonged user and payer decline while trying to reinvent itself for Gen Z through new leadership, safety tools, AI, and product experiments. After nine consecutive quarters of falling subscribers and multiple quarters of shrinking direct revenue, Match Group shuffled leadership, with CEO Faye Iosotaluno exiting in mid‑2025 and new chief Spencer Rascoff positioning a “Tinder transformation” as central to Match’s turnaround narrative. To reverse the slide, Tinder has rolled out clearer dating‑intention categories and “dating modes,” doubled down on trust and safety with Face Check and anti‑bot measures in markets like Canada and India, tested its AI “Chemistry” feature that analyzes users’ answers and camera‑roll photos to serve fewer but more relevant matches, and pushed offline campus events and Double Date to recapture young users’ attention.
2. Match Group (68 posts)
In 2025, Match Group underwent a turbulent but transformative year marked by activist pressure, leadership upheaval, strategic acquisitions, and a full‑scale pivot to AI and emerging markets. Activist investor Anson Funds pushed for change via a planned proxy fight, leading Match to add a new director, sign an information‑sharing deal, and ultimately bring in Spencer Rascoff as CEO while long‑time leaders Gary Swidler and CTO Will Wu exited and former Twitter general counsel Sean Edgett became chief legal officer. Financially, revenue was flat in Q2 and challenged across the year, prompting a turnaround plan centered on reviving Tinder with redesigns and “dating modes,” leaning into Hinge growth, and integrating partners like Qloo to power taste‑based AI matchmaking. At the same time, Match expanded its portfolio with the acquisitions of queer‑focused HER and Muslim‑focused Salams, even as the latter drew backlash from its community, underscoring a broader strategy of owning more niche, identity‑driven apps. The company also doubled down on India as a top long‑term opportunity while warning that Apple’s 30% fee could hamper growth there, and faced mounting regulatory and safety scrutiny, including a 14 million dollar FTC settlement over alleged deceptive practices and a lawsuit from U.S. survivors accusing Tinder and Hinge of failing to remove a known rapist, which it sought to counter with initiatives like The Unbreaking Project to combat romance scams and support victims.
3. Hinge (64 posts)
Even in a year when many online dating brands were struggling, Hinge showed some growth. It reached 15 MAU worldwide and expanded into new markets like Mexico, its first LatAm country, and Brazil while leaning into Gen Z with a 1 million dollar fund for in-person events and a “fairer” approach to account banning. Product-wise, Hinge was doubling down on differentiation with AI features that flag “too basic” prompt answers and help daters move beyond small talk, alongside a heightened safety push that included appointing its first chief risk officer. The brand has also seen major leadership changes: Jackie Jantos was first elevated to president and CMO before being promoted to CEO as founder Justin McLeod stepped away to launch a new AI driven dating app Overtone, with Tamika Young stepping up as CMO.
4. Grindr (61 posts)
Grindr’s 2025 was marked by strong growth, new feature rollouts, and boardroom drama over a failed take-private bid. Quarterly results showed solid momentum, with revenue up around 30% year over year in Q3 2025, rising paying users, and continued profitability even as the company absorbed a Norwegian court’s decision to uphold a 5.5 million euro fine for past illegal data sharing. Product-wise, CEO George Arison has pushed hard into AI and safety, introducing an AI “wingman” and AI Match tools powered by Anthropic and AWS, real-time “Right Now” meetups, a “Taken on Grindr” photo-authenticity badge, biometric age checks, and experiments with a new premium tier and an uncensored content hub called Grindr Presents. Leadership also evolved on the finance side, with CFO Vanna Krantz stepping down and veteran executive John North stepping in as finance chief ahead of a proposed 3.46 billion dollar offer from majority shareholders Ray Zage and James Lu to take Grindr private that was ultimately abandoned amid financing uncertainty.
5. Bumble (59 posts)
In 2025, Bumble went through a difficult restructuring year, with sharp financial declines, multiple leadership changes, and a reassessment of its women-first positioning as it tried to restart growth. Founder Whitney Wolfe Herd returned as CEO after Lidiane Jones’s short tenure, followed by new CFO appointments and a broader leadership refresh, even as Bumble laid off ~30% of staff, sunset apps Fruitz and Official, and watched its market value fall ~90% from its peak. Bumble focused on safety, Gen Z, and diversification. This included ID verification and new safety tools, an “Opening Moves” feature that loosens the strict women-message-first rule, a push into India’s tier-2 cities with localized campaigns, and spinning Bumble BFF into a standalone community app for friendships. Under legal pressure from men’s-rights activists, Bumble formally scaled back its women-first messaging. At the same time, its “For the Love of Love” campaign and Wolfe Herd’s work on a new AI matchmaking app signaled an effort to move beyond swipe fatigue and reposition the brand around deeper relationships.
6. Happn (12 posts)
In 2025, happn was sold to HelloGroup. The deal was intended to expand happn’s global reach by combining its 170 million users and strong presence in Europe, Latin America, India, and Turkey with HelloGroup’s expansion plans across Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. During the year, happn also introduced flexible relationship options as more users turned matches into friendships. In addition, it launched an AI-powered “Perfect Date” tool that suggests personalized date locations to help users move from chatting to meeting in person.
7. Matrimony.com (10 posts)
Matrimony.com, the parent company of Bharat Matrimony, had a mixed year in 2025. The company invested in AI and made shareholder-friendly moves, but growth slowed. Longtime CFO Sushanth Pai resigned early in the year, and veteran media executive Rajesh Sawhney joined the board as an additional director. As AI became more common across India’s matrimony sector, Matrimony.com increased its use of machine learning to improve matchmaking and fraud detection. However, later financial results showed rising costs and a year-on-year profit decline in Q2 FY2026, while revenue fell slightly. To return capital to investors and signal confidence, the company announced a share buyback of up to ₹58.5 crore in December.
8. Three Day Rule (9 posts)
In 2025, Three Day Rule expanded its business at both the high end and the mass market. The company launched a “$1 Million Matchmaking” service and also secured an investment from Palm Venture Studios. Later in the year, it introduced Tai, an AI-powered matchmaking app designed to make its concierge-style matchmaking available to a much wider audience than its traditional high-touch service.
9.-10. Chapter2, Match.com, OkCupid, Sitch, Tea (all with 7 posts)
Chapter 2 acquired M14 white label dating platform last year. Match.com released another Singles in America study in June. OkCupid was usually mentioned alongside other Match Group’s app and we also used several of OKC studies for posts last year. Sitch raised $6.7M and announced the U.S. expansion. Tea was first mentioned as a fast growing app that should help women spot red flags before a first date, but their news coverage quickly turned to negative with two hacks that exposed user data. In October, the app was removed from AppStore by Apple.