At 31, Whitney Wolfe Herd will be the youngest woman to lead a company through an IPO.
Austin-based Bumble Inc., the dating app where women make the first move, is targeting to raise as much as $1.8 billion from its U.S. initial public offering after boosting the size of the deal.
The company plans to sell 45 million shares for $37 to $39 apiece, it said in a filing Monday with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Bumble previously indicated it would look to sell 34.5 million shares at $28 to $30.
At the top of the new range, the IPO would value Bumble at about $8 billion, based on the outstanding Class A shares detailed in its listing document. Private equity firm the Blackstone Group Inc. took a majority stake in Bumble’s parent company in 2019, in a transaction that valued it at $3 billion.
Bumble was founded in 2014 by chief executive officer Whitney Wolfe Herd, a graduate of Southern Methodist University. She was also a co-founder of Tinder and later sued the company for sexual harassment before winning a settlement that helped her establish Bumble in 2014. Tinder is one of a stable of dating apps owned by Dallas-based Match Group.
At 31, Wolfe Herd will be the youngest woman to lead a company through an IPO, according to a company post on LinkedIn.
Bumble plans for its shares to begin trading Feb. 11 on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the symbol BMBL. The offering is being led by Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Citigroup Inc., Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan Chase & Co.
