📵 Dating without swiping

Match Group and Bumble have faced executive turnover amid pressure from investors, while venture capitalists have turned their attention to new entrants to the online dating scene.

One of those apps is Cerca, which has 85,000 downloads as of September, roughly three months after it launched. Tinder had 20,000 downloads in its first three months, the company told Business Insider at the time. 

• Cerca got a flurry of attention from VCs after it was featured on Emily Sundberg’s widely circulated FeedMe newsletter in March, and by June, it had secured a $1.6 million seed investment from Corazon Capital, which is led by a former CEO of Match Group and founder of OkCupid. 

• Raya, an invite-only $24.99-a-month dating app, is another VC darling that is increasing in popularity. The app, known for being used by celebrities and wealthy socialites, has a waitlist of 2.5 million people, the company recently told The Wall Street Journal.

• Even Meta is sensing an opportunity, announcing in September that it would expand Facebook Dating, which launched in 2018 with little fanfare. The new features, which it said are meant to address “swipe fatigue,” include an AI dating assistant and “Meet Cute,” which provides personalized matches through an algorithm rather than swiping.

Both the rise of new apps like Cerca and Facebook’s Meet Cute point to a user who increasingly values getting off the app.

The Takeaway

The dating app market is getting as cutthroat as the dating market, and the pair of publicly traded companies that dominate the field — Bumble and Match — are trying to keep up. In January, Bumble reinstated its founder, Whitney Wolfe Herd, as CEO after she stepped down a year earlier. Blackstone, one of its largest shareholders, sold a chunk of its stake in the company earlier this year. And in February, Match Group tapped Zillow cofounder Spencer Rascoff as its CEO. Rascoff, who served on the board since March 2024, acknowledges that Tinder is where it is because it didn’t innovate. 

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Broadcom spiked nearly 10% yesterday after the chip designer announced that it’s collaborating with OpenAI to develop and deploy 10 gigawatts of custom AI accelerators for use across data centers. 

The companies said these racks and systems will start to be in service in the second half of 2026 and fully completed by the end of 2029.

• There were no details on financial terms in the press release, though The Wall Street Journal said the new agreement is worth “multiple billions of dollars,” citing people familiar with the matter.

• “The racks include Broadcom’s end-to-end portfolio of Ethernet, PCIe and optical connectivity solutions, reaffirming our AI infrastructure portfolio leadership,” Charlie Kawwas, president of Broadcom’s semiconductor division, said in the press release.

• “By building our own chip, we can embed what we’ve learned from creating frontier models and products directly into the hardware, unlocking new levels of capability and intelligence,” said Greg Brockman, OpenAI cofounder and president.

Broadcom had soared during its Q3 earnings call back in September, when CEO Hock Tan said the chip designer had booked a major new customer that the Financial Times then reported was OpenAI. However, CNBC reported yesterday that Kawwas has indicated OpenAI is not that mystery $10 billion buyer.

The Takeaway

The calendar is telling us it’s fall, but it really feels like OpenAI announcement season. Just last week, the ChatGPT developer struck a megadeal that sees it get an up to 10% stake in AMD, rounding out a series of massive commitments that will require the venture to find (and burn) much more cash.

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Stitch Fix CEO lays out his three-phase plan to rebuild using AI and human connection

Once best known for its subscription styling boxes, the online personal styling service has a new, sharper identity: a retailer that marries actual human connection with artificial intelligence. Sherwood News talked with CEO Matt Baer about his plan to turn around the company.

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• Rare earth stocks soared after JPMorgan announced a $10 billion investment plan in the sector

• Quantum stocks enjoyed a charged day of trading after IonQ announced a “significant advancement”

• Micron jumped after a rare double upgrade to “outperform” from “underperform” by BNP Paribas Exane, which hiked its price target to a Street high of $270

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