The dad or mum firm of Hinge and Tinder is courting a possible new addition to its roster. Match Group on Monday introduced a $100 million funding in Sniffies, a map-based cruising platform for queer males.
As a part of the funding, Sniffies will proceed to be led by founder and CEO Blake Gallagher, the corporate mentioned.
“From the primary conversations with the Match Group group, we knew they understood what makes Sniffies completely different. This partnership is about supporting that, not redefining it,” Gallagher mentioned in an announcement on the Sniffies Instagram—which was met with skepticism by followers.
Sniffies launched in 2018 and has three million month-to-month lively customers through its web-based platform.
Investing to personal?
Match Group’s announcement famous that the minority stake got here with the choice for a full acquisition sooner or later. Alongside the Sniffies funding, the corporate instructed Bloomberg that it will be winding down Archer, its platform for queer males launched in 2023.
The corporate’s technique with Sniffies mimics the one it adopted with Hinge, which Match Group first backed in 2017 and bought in 2018. Inside Match Group, Hinge founder Justin McLeod constructed that platform into the crown jewel of its portfolio.
Not like Hinge, Sniffies has managed to scale to twenty million messages despatched day by day with no conventional app.
Customers entry the platform—which reveals a map of close by “cruisers”—through internet browser. Although customers can register with an electronic mail tackle to maintain message historical past and uploaded photographs, they will additionally be part of simply with their date of start.
Regardless of working with Apple to launch an iOS app in March 2025—eliminating the nameless login possibility in-app—it was eliminated inside two months for what Sniffies mentioned was “ongoing content material restrictions.”’
Searching for queer customers
Match Group’s Sniffies funding follows final 12 months’s acquisition of Her, an app for girls interested in girls, signaling a concentrate on courting LGBTQ customers as corporations like Grindr present development amongst a part of that demographic.
Grindr stays the chief on the planet of LGBTQ-focused courting apps, logging 15 million common month-to-month customers in 2025 (a 5% 12 months over 12 months improve) and 1.26 million common paying customers, a 17% improve over 2024. That boosted full-year income by 26% 12 months over 12 months, totaling $366 million.
The place Grindr has been working to shed its repute as a hookup app, emphasizing courting and expanding its scope to be “the worldwide gayborhood in your pocket”—together with telehealth for erectile dysfunction and weight-loss medicine, in addition to an ongoing album-promotion partnership with Madonna—Sniffies has made no bones about what the app is for.
Sustaining the vibe
“Sniffies will all the time be the unapologetic cruising platform you already know and love,” Gallagher’s Instagram assertion mentioned, including that Match Group’s cash would go towards platform enhancements, tackling spam accounts, and rising its consumer base. However commenters are nervous that the funding—and potential for an acquisition—will change the character of the app.
“Extremely involved about this app being allowed to be what it’s as a way to court docket buyers,” one commenter wrote.
One consumer highlighted privateness considerations, citing Match Group’s recent settlement with the Federal Commerce Fee (FTC), which sued the corporate claiming that its OKCupid app allowed facial recognition know-how firm Calrifai to entry customers’ demographic data, location information, and a few three million photographs, violating its privateness coverage. (Match Group didn’t admit wrongdoing.)
“Looks like on of Sniffies[‘] largest promoting level, anonymity, gained’t be lasting lengthy resulting from this new minority funding,” one commenter wrote.
