Bumble stock is up today. Whitney Wolfe Herd’s solution to ‘swipe fatigue’ might be part of the reason why

Shares in Bumble Inc. (Nasdaq: BMBL), maker of the Bumble dating app, are surging this morning after the company announced its fourth-quarter and full-year 2025 results.

The stock price bounce will be a relief to investors in dating companies, an industry that has suffered severely in recent years due to so-called swipe fatigue among users.

Here’s what you need to know about Bumble’s earnings and why its stock is surging this morning.

Bumble beats on Q4 revenue

Today, Bumble reported its Q4 2025 results. And on the surface, those results weren’t great. As a matter of fact, just purely based on a year-over-year comparison, many of the company’s most important metrics were down across the board, including:

• Total Revenue: $224.2 million, down 14.3% from the same quarter a year earlier.
• Bumble App Revenue: $181.0 million, down 14.8%
• Badoo App and Other Revenue: $43.2 million, down 12.4% 
• Total Paying Users: 3.3 million, down 20.5%
• Net loss: $611.1 million (versus a Net profit of $9.3 million in the same quarter a year earlier.

Still, despite these poor year-over-year results, BMBL shares are popping this morning—and there are two main reasons why.

Bumble beats revenue expectations, and embraces AI

The most immediate reason for Bumble’s premarket stock bump is the company’s total revenue of $224.2 million for the quarter.

Yes, that sum is down more than 14% from the $261.6 million in revenue during the same quarter a year earlier, but critically, it still beat analysts’ relatively low expectations.

As Reuters points out, analysts had expected Bumble to bring in $221.3 million in total revenue for the quarter. Bumble ended up beating this figure by nearly $3 million.

And while that $3 million sum is relatively small, it signals to investors that things weren’t as bad in the quarter as many analysts expected.

But investors are also likely feeling optimistic about another Bumble announcement today. On the company’s earnings call, founder and CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd revealed that Bumble is revamping the app while also adding new AI tools to help users find more relevant matches.

Wolfe Herd said that “Bumble 2.0” will deliver a new experience designed to help address dating app users’ dissatisfaction.

This dissatisfaction is usually referred to as “swipe fatigue,” and it has turned many younger people off dating apps in recent years. Those users have grown tired of the endless swipes that turn individuals into commodities and often lead to few real-world meetups.

“Bumble 2.0 introduces a chapter-based structure designed to help members tell their stories more authentically and understand one another more deeply,” Wolfe Herd said on the call, according to a PitchBook transcript. “This will enable them to see matches with stronger compatibility signals, build confidence in the experience, and get to meaningful in real life dates more quickly.”

Additionally, Wolfe Herd said the company is embracing artificial intelligence, announcing a new AI chatbot that is in development, called “Bee.”

The chatbot is designed to interact with Bumble users to find out about their likes, interests, and dating objectives, and then use that information to better match them with other users who share the same interests and goals.

Bee, Wolfe Herd told analysts, “is designed to become a personal dating assistant and matchmaker, learning members’ values, relationship goals, communication style, lifestyle, and dating intentions through private conversations, then using those insights to identify mutual compatibility to find better dates with a higher degree of confidence and relevance.”

Bumble 2.0 and Bee are expected to roll out sometime in 2026.

Some users in the key Gen Z age demographic have expressed skepticism about whether AI features will ultimately improve the dating app experience, as Fast Company reported last year.

Still, as artificial intelligence is all the rage in the tech industry, investors are likely pleased to know that Bumble isn’t sitting on the sidelines in the AI era.

Bumble stock has had a horrible recent run

After Bumble’s Q4 results were announced, the price of the company’s shares surged.

As of this writing in premarket trading, BMBL shares are up over 23% to $3.51. Yesterday, the company’s shares closed at $2.84.

However, despite the massive stock price jump today, BMBL shares have had a horrible run in recent years. As of yesterday, the closing price of BMBL shares has fallen more than 41% over the past 12 months. And over the past five years, the company’s stock price has collapsed by more than 95%.

In March 2021, BMBL shares had traded over $74 apiece.

But Bumble isn’t the only dating app to see its stock price crash. Over the past year, Match Group, Inc. (Nasdaq: MTCH), owner of Tinder, Hinge, OkCupid, and more, has seen its shares decline about 2.4%. But over the past five years, the company’s shares have declined a staggering 80%. 

Likewise, shares of dating app maker Hello Group Inc. (Nasdaq: MOMO) have declined by more than 63% over the past five years. The only major dating app to be up over that five-year timeframe is Grindr Inc. (NYSE: GRND), whose shares have risen more than 19% over the period.

The declines of these major dating app makers coincide with increasing dissatisfaction among dating app users, who frequently argue that the apps have become too expensive and that matches are fewer and farther between.

While investors may be rewarding Bumble today, the company will need to address this user disillusionment if it is to successfully turn around its business.

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