Have you ever wished that there was a dating app that only presented you with potential matches that were in some way connected to your social circle already? Now there’s an app for that, launched so you can connect with friends of friends online instead of, say, just asking your friends to hook you up.
Elsewhere in the dating app world there’s a new ‘no chat’ dating app designed to push straight to real-life meet-ups, new Feeld figures suggest that the sex-positive app is attracting more normies, and Facebook Dating is both A: still in existence and B: rolling out a new AI wingman function.
All this and more in our latest monthly dating app news roundup.
Cerca connects users to friends of friends
A new dating app that only presents people connected to your social circle as potential matches has launched, aiming to quell trepidation about being matched with strangers.
Cerca was set up by a group of Gen Z friends in New York, and got $1.6 million from a seed round in summer 2025. It currently has around 60,000 users, mainly based in New York and universities.
You sync your phone contacts on the app, which then only shows friends (or contacts, rather) or friends of friends (contacts of contacts?) to you as potential matches. You can make up to four swipes a day, with any matches made revealed in the evening each day. If you ‘like’ someone but the like isn’t reciprocated, your like doesn’t show up, and for matches who ‘liked’ first is not revealed.
The idea is that the app eliminates the prospect of going on dates with strangers you have no connection whatsoever to, and it could indeed work well in highly-populated areas and among institutions such as universities.
(Or, of course, it could be a surefire way to create massive drama among friendship groups, if people only end up dating within small social pools.)
Amata wants non-amateur daters
Another new dating app launch comes in the form of Amata, which utilises AI for matchmaking but doesn’t let you chat extensively to your match, instead pushing you towards meeting in person.
The app has been trialed in Australia, and is now launching in the US, first in New York. Amata’s AI matchmaker asks you questions about your dating preferences then suggests a match based on your answers. Then, you can pay $16 to get the AI to set a date to meet your match in person. You can only begin to message your match directly two hours before the date is set to take place.
The idea is that only people serious about proper in-person dating use the app. If you cancel two dates in a row, your ability to match at all is paused for a week.
Amata CEO Ludovic Huraux said: “We don’t want people who are not emotionally available, who are on dating apps just for their ego boost… it’s about intentionality.”
The app has already raised $6 million in pre-seed funding.
Feeld keeps on growing
Who said polygamy wasn’t built for the long-term? New figures show that dating app Feeld, known as a haven for more ‘open-minded’ match-seekers, has seen a large spike in profits recently.
The app achieved $66 million in sales in 2024, an increase of 26 percent from the previous year. The increase was, however, smaller than the previous year’s sales leap, which saw Feeld nearly double its turnover.
The impressive sales figures contributed to Feeld making a total of $12.5 million profit in 2024, in an industry sector that is generally on the decline, with many dating app companies scrambling to remain relevant to younger users.
Part of the success of Feeld is likely to come from it being rare in that it’s marketed as a sex-positive app, yet is one of few in the niche to not be populated by overwhelming amounts of of fake users and scammers.
Feeld’s leadership has recently said that the app seems to be attracting more “vanilla” users, too, edging the app closer to the mainstream.
Grindr big cheeses in talks to go private
Grindr isn’t enjoying the upward financial trajectory Feeld is, and insiders at the company are reportedly considering taking it private.
Grindr shares have lost about 26 percent of their value in 2025 so far, and two majority shareholders, Raymond Zage and James Lu, are in talks with Fortress Investing Group about a financing deal for the pair to become private owners of the app, reported Reuters.
The LGBTQ+ dating app was sold by Beijing Kunlun Tech to San Vicente Acquisition LLC in 2020 for more than $600 million.
Gindr’s shares perked up at the news of the private acquisition talks, rising by around ten percent.
Earlier this year the app launched Grindr Presents: a home for Grindr-made content such as videos and podcasts, in an attempt to increase in-app engagement.
Facebook Dating’s AI assistant
Remember Facebook Dating? Well, it may not be the wasteland many might assume it to be, with meta claiming that hundreds of thousands of young adults (aged 18-29) in the US and Canada make profiles on it each month, and that the amount of young adult matches made is rising.
Now Facebook Dating has rolled out a new AI function that let’s you get pretty specific about what kind of person you want to meet. It resembles an AI chatbot within the app and you can ask it to do things like “find me a Brooklyn girl in tech”, prompting potential matches.
The AI dating assistant can also make date suggestions and help you improve your Facebook Dating profile.
Facebook Dating is also rolling out a new function called Meet Cute, that automatically matches you with a “surprise match” based on the matching algorithm. Initially Meet Cute matches are made weekly, and you can opt out of them.
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