{"id":8781,"date":"2025-10-14T04:29:35","date_gmt":"2025-10-14T04:29:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/grindrs-owners-may-take-it-private-after-a-financial-squeeze\/"},"modified":"2025-10-14T04:29:35","modified_gmt":"2025-10-14T04:29:35","slug":"grindrs-owners-may-take-it-private-after-a-financial-squeeze","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/grindrs-owners-may-take-it-private-after-a-financial-squeeze\/","title":{"rendered":"Grindr\u2019s owners may take it private after a financial squeeze"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<p id=\"speakable-summary\" class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Grindr&rsquo;s majority owners are scrambling to take the LGBTQ+ dating app private after a stock decline triggered a personal financial crisis, according to a report from Semafor.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The owners in question are Raymond Zage, a former hedge fund manager and U.S. expat now based in Singapore, and James Lu, a Chinese-American entrepreneur and former Amazon and Baidu exec. Together they led the 2020 acquisition of Grindr from Chinese ownership for over $600 million, then took the app public in 2022 through a blank-check merger.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Reportedly, Zage and Lu, who together control more than 60% of Grindr, pledged nearly all their shares as collateral for personal loans from a unit of Singapore&rsquo;s sovereign wealth fund Temasek. After Grindr began a slide at the end of September, those loans became undercollateralized (worth less than the debt), so the Temasek unit seized and sold some of the shares last week.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Grindr&rsquo;s stock slide appears disconnected from business fundamentals &ndash; profits were up 25% in the second quarter, Semafor notes, though it has seen some executive turnover; there has been some investor concern about narrowing margins, too.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Either way, the pair are now said to be in talks with Fortress Investment Group &ndash; itself now majority owned by Mubadala Investment Company, which is <em>itself<\/em> owned by the government of Abu Dhabi &ndash; to secure financing for a buyout at around $15 per share, which would value Grindr at around $3 billion. Shares jumped following the report.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><sub>Grindr&rsquo;s owners may take it private after a financial squeeze<\/sub><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Grindr&rsquo;s majority owners are scrambling to take the LGBTQ+ dating app private after a stock decline triggered a personal financial crisis, according to a report from Semafor. The owners in question are Raymond Zage, a former hedge fund manager and U.S. expat now based in Singapore, and James Lu, a Chinese-American entrepreneur and former Amazon&#8230;<\/p>\n<p class=\"more-link-wrap\"><a href=\"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/grindrs-owners-may-take-it-private-after-a-financial-squeeze\/\" class=\"more-link\">Read More<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &ldquo;Grindr\u2019s owners may take it private after a financial squeeze&rdquo;<\/span> &raquo;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8782,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8781","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8781","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8781"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8781\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8782"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8781"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8781"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8781"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}