Bumble Inc. stock surged on Monday after The Wall Street Journal reported that the online dating company is nearing a deal to go private.

Bumble is in advanced talks to be taken private in a deal that values the company at about $1 billion, The Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

The buyer of Bumble is reportedly Ithaca Holdings, which was co-founded by Ravi Gupta and John Hegeman. According to their LinkedIn profiles, Gupta was the CFO of Instacart from 2015 to 2019 and Hegeman was the chief revenue officer of Meta Platforms from December 2024 to February 2026.

CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd is expected to remain involved with the company, according to the report.

Bumble stock soared 49% to $3.78 on Monday, its largest percentage increase on record, according to Dow Jones Market Data.

Bumble and Gupta did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Barron's.

Bumble is a dating app that was introduced as a place where women could be the initiators of conversations. The idea was to give women a sense of control and comfort in an online dating world filled with a lot of uncertainty.

The company was founded in 2014 by Wolfe Herd, who was also the co-founder of fellow dating app Tinder. Bumble went public in 2021 with an IPO price of $43 per share. According to Dow Jones Market Data, Bumble had a market cap of $7.94 billion when it went public.

It's been a rocky road for the stock. Bumble has faced strong competition from companies like Match Group at a time when dating sites have been dealing with the issue of online dating fatigue as people are seemingly tired of the same old swiping experience.

In a major strategy shift to try to combat competition and improve usership, Bumble announced in August that it would allow all users, not just women, to send an opening message to someone they've matched with.

Bumble stock is up 8.5% this year but down 26% over the past 12 months.