The largest owners of Grindr are working to take the LGBTQ+ dating app off the market over personal financial woes, according to Semafor.
Zage and Lu have pledged almost all of their Grindr shares as collateral for personal loans from a unit of Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund Temasek, which together controls over 60% of the company, according to people familiar with the situation. But as Grindr went into a tailspin at the end of September, those loans turned undercollateralized (when the value is less than the debt), so last week, the unit seized and sold some of the shares.
Grindr’s stock dip doesn’t seem like it would slide from fundamentals — the company said profits were up 25% in the second quarter, Semafor notes, though there has been some executive turnover; investors had also shown some concern over falling margins.
Those owners are Raymond Zage, a former hedge fund manager and U.S. expat living in Singapore, and his business partner James Lu, a Chinese-American entrepreneur who previously worked as an exec for Amazon and Baidu.
Together, they co-headlined a $600 million-plus deal to acquire Grindr in 2020 out of Chinese ownership, then took the app public in 2022 by way of a blank-check merger.
In any case, the twosome is now reportedly in talks with Fortress Investment Group — itself now majority owned by Mubadala Investment Company, which is itself owned by the government of Abu Dhabi — for financing to mount a buyout at near $15 per share that would value Grindr at around $3 billion. Shares jumped following the report.
Grindr App History
Grindr is one of the largest and most popular social networking apps for gay, bi, trans, and queer people of the planet that has forever changed the way LGBTQ+ people connect and explore. Established in 2009, it introduced location-based matchmaking to the world, which enables users to find and chat with people nearby.
“In just a few years, Grindr has become so much more than simply a way to hook up or meet men, the app now exists as an all-encompassing lifestyle source for millions of gay and bi men around the world. It is not without controversy — sometimes accruing over privacy and corporate decisions, but the app is a cultural touchstone in contemporary queer life, shaping digital dating practices and facilitating conversations on identity, connection and safety within the LGBTQ+ community.
