Interested parties reportedly include investment groups and competitors. That is a process that has now been halted, writes Reuters, with the investment bank Cowen now handling enquiries in a sale process instead. In August, it was reported that Kunlun had started the ball rolling for an IPO of the Grindr app.
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Kunlun is now a 48 percent shareholder of Opera Software as part of the Chinese consortium that owns the Norwegian company. In 2016, when the company was part of a consortium acquiring the internet company Opera for $1.2 billion, it eventually renegotiated the deal down to $600 million for only part of the business after regulators raised red flags over data protection concerns. It has something of a track record with regulators over data privacy concerns, but also of being okay with losing battles to win the war, so to speak. Kunlun also publishes games, provides online financial services, and has other internet holdings such as the Opera internet browser. Kunlun originally acquired a 60 percent stake in the company in 2016 for $93 million and completed the acquisition in January 2018, reportedly paying an additional $152 million. According to a report in Reuters, Grindr’s owner Kunlun is looking for a buyer of the company after the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) determined that having the app owned by a Chinese company poses a national security risk.
Grindr, the popular dating app for gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people, looks like it might be changing hands again, a year after it was acquired at a valuation of $245 million.