Bumble to Lay Off Almost a Third of Its Staff

Dating app Bumble announced that it was cutting almost 30 percent of its global workforce, shaking up the company while its userbase continues to decline.

According to its new CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd, who’s back heading up the struggling company she founded, Bumble will be focused on returning to leaner operations to drive growth, according to The Guardian. The company will be cutting 240 roles globally in efforts to turnaround its sinking stock price.

Bumble shares rallied 24 percent during early trading the day after the announcement.

“We’ve reset our strategy, and are going back to a start-up mentality – rooted in an ownership mindset and team structures designed for faster, more meaningful execution,” Herd wrote in an email to employees about the layoffs.

According to The Guardian, Herd also wrote that Bumble needed to take “decisive action” in order “to restructure to build a company that’s resilient, intentional, and ready for the next decade.”

The company expects to see about $40 million in annual cost savings, according to Tech Crunch, which it will reinvest in product and technology development. Bumble also said it would pay out about $13 million to $18 million in nonrecurring costs related to severance, benefits, and other costs for affected employees. These costs would impact revenue in the third and fourth quarters of 2025.

After announcing the workforce reduction, Bumble increased its second-quarter revenue forecast to $244 million to $249 million, up from the previous forecast of $235 million to $243 million.

Bumble is not the only dating app company seeing a decline in users and revenue. Match Group’s Tinder has been struggling recently, with activist investors making executive changes such as hiring a new CEO and focusing on AI-driven features. In May, Match Group announced it was laying off 13 percent of its global staff, mostly affecting those working on Tinder.

Hinge has been a bright spot for Match Group, with its userbase continuing to grow. The company is putting more resources into developing features for the app.

Bumble’s last round of layoffs in February 2024 was significant as well. The company cut a third of its employees then, or about 350 people.

In a recent interview with The New York Times, Herd said: “Bumble needs me back. It’s an extension of me to some degree, and watching it fall from its peak has been very hard.”