It looks like dating apps are finding new ways to make consumers fall back in love with them.
In late July, Grindr Inc. announced second quarter earnings results that were largely positive. The West Hollywood-based mobile dating platform that primarily caters to queer people reported a revenue of $104.2 million, a 27% increase from the $82.3 million it reported in 2024.
“I’ve said that 2025 is about accelerating execution towards our long-term vision, including the launch of transformative products within the app, which expands how our users engage,” George Arison, the chief executive of Grindr, said in an earnings call. “This quarter is another proof point that we can deliver on our road map while continuing to drive strong financial performance.”
The past year was a struggle for most mainstream dating apps. User engagement on the 10 largest dating apps declined by 16% between 2023 and 2024, according to a 2024 report published by the United Kingdom’s Office of Communications. After laying off 30% of its workforce in June, Bumble Inc. reported an 8% decrease in revenue during its second-quarter earnings results for 2025. Before venture capitalist Spencer Rascoff took the reins of dating app conglomerate Match Group Inc. in February, the company reported a 4% decline in revenue in the first quarter. Much of that drop came from Match Group’s popular brand app Tinder, the West Hollywood-based first mover in this category.
But it looks like the tides are turning. Though Grindr’s expenses have exceeded total revenue in 2024 and 2025, the company’s net loss margin was reported at 16%, compared to the 27.2% reported the year prior. Under Rascoff, a cofounder and the chief executive of Santa Monica-based venture studio 75 & Sunny, Match Group’s shares rose more than 10% in mid-August following a favorable earnings report.
“We are operating like a company that is just getting started, and we believe the best chapters of this category and company are still ahead,” Rascoff said during the earnings call. “We are moving with urgency, we are obsessed with the product, and we’re building for the long term.”
Los Angeles could very well be the epicenter of dating app innovation. More than 5% of the world’s dating technology market is in the area, with companies like Grindr, Sawtelle-based Three Day Rule and Venice-based Lox Club raising millions of dollars.
Los Angeles’ early tech sector was dominated by big names in social media like Santa Monica-based Snap Inc. and Tinder, the first dating app to gain mainstream adoption nationwide. Founded in 2012, the platform became the most popular dating app in 2016, maintaining a 25.6% market share of the U.S. online dating scene.
But Tinder has become a cautionary tale as its popularity quickly dwindled in the following years. The company was acquired by Match Group in 2017. In the first quarter of 2025, Match Group reported Tinder lost 400,000 paid users for the second quarter in a row, with no chance of slowing down. In July, Faye Iosotaluno stepped down as Tinder’s chief executive and was replaced by Spencer Rascoff, who said during the company’s second quarter earnings call that Tinder “needs a lot of work, and it is therefore my primary focus.”
“As the largest dating app in the world by revenue and usage, Tinder has unparalleled brand awareness and scale,” Rascoff said. “But the product had grown stale through a lack of innovation and a focus on short-term monetization.”
Innovation seems to be the name of the game for these dating app giants, which have used algorithms, large language models and massive data sets to make sense of the unpredictable and emotion-driven world of dating – while creating value for their shareholders. Both Rascoff and Arison spoke about the need for users to have a pleasant experience on the app as well as for users to get results, whether that means more matches, conversations or dates.
These companies are largely turning to generative artificial intelligence to build new offerings for users, and perhaps more importantly, build strong proprietary data sets on their user base. Grindr’s gAI (pronounced “gay-eye”) is a foundational model the company is building to understand and generate discernable insights on queer-specific language and situations.
“It allows us to run a variety of models to produce custom data sets and structured insights; train AI to understand gay life, cultural norms and male imagery; and establish a robust privacy framework and to the world-class talent engine at the intersection of product, engineering and AI,” Arison said.
Meanwhile, Match Group unveiled a slew of AI-enabled features it was either testing or had already deployed. In New Zealand, the company piloted a feature that used AI to recommend more compatible matches to users. Hinge, another dating app under the Match Group conglomerate, rolled out a tool that provides feedback on answers users give to certain prompts provided by the app. The move reduced generic responses by 33%, according to the company.
“We’ll plan to noticeably improve recommendations throughout the app experience as more of our algorithms are powered by AI,” Rascoff said. “Users will see and feel this difference in experiences, including boost, standouts, most compatible and more.”
Whether these AI-focused updates will cater to younger generations remains to be seen. A Bloomberg Intelligence survey from July that polled 1,000 dating app users found that Gen Z was more uncomfortable using artificial intelligence to fill out their profiles, answer messages and alter their photos than other demographics. They were also more reluctant to use the dating apps.
Companies are still looking for ways to control the off-app dating experience. Tinder launched “Festival Mode” in 2022 to enable users to find each other in person at concerts and music festivals after connecting on the app. Arison said Grindr launched a location tool that would allow users to better glean where active users are and what they’re around.
“Over the long term, we believe mapping can be really helpful in building out what we call local discovery, which is one of our long-term ‘gayborhood’ growth verticals – things like identifying where to stay, where to eat, what kind of activities might be happening around you to go to that can be used by people locally,” Arison said.
