Key points
- Ditto, an AI text-based matchmaker, says it has 160,000+ college signups and has generated 80,000+ dates.
- Bumble (BMBL) trades near a 52-week low after paying users fell 21% year over year in Q1 2026. Shares are down about 62% from last September's high.
- Match Group (MTCH) is up about 28% this year on Hinge growth and buybacks, even as Tinder also loses Gen Z users.
Ditto is an AI dating app built by two UC Berkeley dropouts, cofounders Allen Wang and Eric Liu. It skips swiping entirely. Users text a dedicated iMessage number and answer questions about themselves, and each Wednesday at 7 p.m. the app sends them one match and a planned date. Users cannot browse profiles or collect dozens of matches.
CBS News' Bay Area affiliate reported on Aug. 21 that Ditto has signed up more than 160,000 college students. Cofounder Allen Wang told the station that the app has generated more than 80,000 dates, though he didn't say whether that figure counts scheduled dates or dates students actually attended.
TechCrunch profiled Ditto on Aug. 6, when Wang reported a 20% match-to-date conversion rate. That rate counts matches, not signups, and Ditto creates new matches each week, so it has proposed far more than 160,000 matches since launch. The signup total, date total, and conversion rate measure separate stages of the funnel.
Ditto has raised $9.2 million in seed funding and has 12 employees. It's a private company, but its audience overlaps with Match Group (MTCH) and Bumble (BMBL) among college-age users.
Wang built Ditto around frustration with swiping and repetitive conversations.
"We see that people are getting super tired of all the endless swiping and endless small talk, and they're really looking for something more genuine in real life," he told TechCrunch.
Bumble's paying users fell 21%
Bumble's paying-user count fell 21% year over year in the first quarter of 2026, from 4.01 million to 3.17 million. BMBL closed at $2.80 on Aug. 21, down about 62% from its September 2025 high of $7.32, and shares trade close to the June low of $2.54.
CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd has described the decline as part of a reset toward users with higher engagement. Bumble plans to launch a rebuilt app in select markets during the fourth quarter, with an AI assistant called Bee that learns a user's preferences through conversation.
A 2025 Forbes Health survey found that 79% of Gen Z and millennial respondents had experienced dating-app burnout at least some of the time. Match Group has also cited Gen Z's retreat from swiping and cut 13% of its workforce this year.
Hinge and buybacks support Match Group
Match Group closed at $40.35 on Aug. 20, up about 28% since the start of the year and near its 52-week high of $41.40. Hinge's revenue increased 22% year over year in the second quarter, while active users grew 13%.
Match Group also spent about $803 million repurchasing more than 10% of its shares and introduced a quarterly dividend of $0.20 per share. Second-quarter net income rose 36% to $171 million, despite a 1% decline in total revenue.
I read the rally as a bet on Hinge, buybacks, and the new dividend. Match Group hasn't shown that AI can restore Tinder's appeal among younger users.
Tinder and Bumble turn to AI matchmaking
Tinder launched Chemistry, a feature that reviews a user's photos and answers to estimate compatibility. Bumble's rebuilt app removes swiping and uses Bee to learn what a user wants before presenting matches, though the company has yet to show that the new product can improve retention or increase its paying-user count.
Ditto shows interest in the same approach. Wang says one in five matches leads to a date and four out of five don't, and the service remains limited to selected college campuses and charges no subscription fee. Its planned paid tiers will test whether students will pay for it.
Ditto shows that college students will try a dating app built around curated AI matches. Its ability to convert that interest into paying users remains unproven. Chemistry and Bee face a related test at scale, improving retention and subscriber growth at Tinder and Bumble, and I'll be watching whether either company's Q3 numbers actually show it.
