Untainted Love

Hinge is winning the dating game. Can it stay on top?

- By YASMIN GAGNE

JUSTIN MCLEOD, COFOUNDER AND CEO

Sitting on a coffee table in his Chelsea office in New York City and surrounded by framed wedding invitations on the walls, Justin McLeod is worrying about AI.

Specifically, the cofounder and CEO of dating app Hinge is concerned that his users—many of whom have asked him to their weddings over the years—might fall in love with it instead of one another.

MCLEOD HAS SPENT THE GREATER part of the past 15 years studying the dynamics of human relationships, including what makes one person fall for another, and he sees that chatbots offer exactly what many people crave. “Why would I invest in these hard human relationships with people that are not always available or might reject me when I can talk to this thing that is right here and will always say the right thing?” he wonders.

On this sunny afternoon in late September, chatbots aren't yet upending dating apps, but something sure is. Bumble, once the women-first darling, has shed 460,000 paying users since the end of 2024, prompting the return of founder Whitney Wolfe Herd in March. She's embarked on an aggressive retrenchment campaign that has included laying off 30% of the staff. Tinder, meanwhile, has lost more than 1.5 million paying users since its peak in 2022. Its parent company, Match Group, has also recorded steady revenue declines for the past three years for its business unit that includes former stalwarts like Match.com and OkCupid. Match appointed Spencer Rascoff as a wartime CEO in February 2025; he's slashed head count by 13%.