After Bumble’s Stock Pop, Chinese Dating App Soul Seeks Billion-Dollar IPO

Signage for Bumble's IPO at the Nasdaq market in February. Photo by Bloomberg.

A Chinese dating and social chat app called Soul is preparing for an initial public offering likely to value the company at $1 billion or more, riding a wave of interest after the recent success of U.S. dating app Bumble and a rush of Chinese startups tapping red-hot capital markets.

Soul, which masks users’ profile pictures and matches people based on common interests, is preparing to list shares in the U.S., according to three people with knowledge of the matter. Some investors have compared Soul to a text- and audio-only version of Bumble, the U.S. dating app that went public in February on the Nasdaq and is now worth nearly $13.5 billion, following a 72% rise in its stock price from the IPO level. The Bumble app has some 12 million users.