\ud83d\udd26 Spotlight<\/p>\n
Happy New Year, Los Angeles. \ud83d\udc98<\/p>\n
If you want a clear read on how people actually behave when the calendar flips, you do not need a survey. You need Tinder\u2019s Dating Sunday data. The numbers below are from January 2025, compared with 2024, and they show a pattern the app sees every year when millions of people log in and take their love life off pause.<\/p>\n
\ud83d\udd25 Tinder\u2019s Annual Traffic Spike, By The Numbers<\/p>\n
On Dating Sunday, the first Sunday of the year, Tinder<\/a> hit its biggest activity spike on the calendar. Compared with the app\u2019s typical daily averages for that year, and trends versus the prior year:<\/p>\n \ud83d\udcc8 Swipes were nearly 13% higher<\/p>\n \ud83d\udcac Messages were nearly 10% higher<\/p>\n \u2764\ufe0f Likes were over 10% higher<\/p>\n \ud83d\udde3\ufe0f Users had almost 7% more conversations<\/p>\n \ud83e\udd1d Matches climbed to about 380 matches per second, roughly a 10% lift compared to the rest of the year<\/p>\n Across Peak Season, from January 1 through February 14, Tinder saw on the order of 10 million more messages per day and roughly 40 million additional likes than its non peak baseline.<\/p>\n The figures are from last January, but the shape of this curve is remarkably consistent year after year, which is why they are a solid proxy for what is happening again at the start of 2026.<\/p>\n \u26a1 Not Just More Use, Different Use<\/p>\n What makes the Dating Sunday data more interesting than a simple \u201cusage went up\u201d story is how behavior shifted compared with the same day the year before.<\/p>\n Users replied about 2 hours and 25 minutes faster on average while also sending more messages, more likes and starting more conversations. That looks less like background swiping and more like a concentrated intent spike, people coming back to the app with a clear goal and actually engaging.<\/p>\n From a product and infrastructure perspective, that turns this one Sunday into a full stack exercise. Ranking, recommendations, notifications, trust and safety and core scale all get hammered at once, with high signal data flooding the system over a short window. Most apps only see that kind of behavior during a one off viral moment or a big launch. Tinder sees it every January.<\/p>\n \ud83d\udcca What The Surge Actually Signals<\/p>\n There is plenty of talk about people being tired of apps. The behavior here tells a more nuanced story.<\/p>\n When the calendar flipped last year, people reopened Tinder, used it more, started more conversations and replied faster than they had the year before. That does not look like a category that has lost its grip on users. It looks like a mature consumer network that can still generate predictable, measurable spikes of attention and intent on cue.<\/p>\n If those patterns hold, the first few weeks of 2026 once again look less like a slow reset and more like a live load test for an LA built product at global scale.<\/p>\n Now keep scrolling for this week\u2019s LA venture deals, fund announcements and acquisitions.<\/p>\n \ud83e\udd1d Venture Deals<\/p>\n LA Companies<\/p>\n Cambium<\/a>, an El Segundo based advanced materials startup, raised a $100M Series B led by 8VC. The company uses AI, chemical informatics and high-performance computing to design new polymers and composites for defense, aerospace and other high-performance sectors, and will use the funding to accelerate its product pipeline and scale manufacturing capacity across the U.S. and Europe following its acquisition of SHD. – learn more<\/a><\/p>\n LA Venture Funds<\/p>\n Plus Capital<\/a> joined Pomelo Care\u2019s<\/a> $92M Series C, backing the New York based virtual care company at a $1.7B valuation alongside lead investor Stripes, Andreessen Horowitz, Atomico, BoxGroup and SV Angel. Pomelo, which already covers about 25 million lives and nearly 7% of U.S. births, will use the funding to take its proven, outcomes-driven maternity model and expand it across women\u2019s and children\u2019s health more broadly, from reproductive care and pediatrics through hormonal health, perimenopause and menopause. – learn more<\/a>Kittyhawk<\/a> Frontier is leading a $2M seed round in Denver based encoord<\/a>, joining new and existing investors to back the company\u2019s grid-planning software platform. encoord\u2019s flagship product, SAInt, is designed to give utilities, developers, data centers and grid operators an integrated financial and operational view of the power system, helping cut interconnection timelines by up to five years and optimize capital planning. The new capital will go toward expanding the team, advancing the platform and scaling into key markets as demand for smarter, electrification-ready grid planning tools accelerates. – learn more<\/a>Alexandria Real Estate Equities<\/a> participated in Mediar Therapeutics\u2019<\/a> oversubscribed $76M Series B, joining new investors like Longwood Fund and Asahi Kasei Pharma Ventures in a round co-led by Amplitude Ventures and ICG. The Boston-based biotech will use the funding to advance its first-in-class fibrosis portfolio, including MTX-474, now in a global Phase 2a trial for systemic sclerosis, and MTX-439, which is moving into Phase 1 studies for fibrosis associated with chronic kidney disease, alongside its partnered MTX-463 program with Eli Lilly. – learn more<\/a>GordonMD Global Investments<\/a> joined Soley Therapeutics\u2019<\/a> $200M Series C, backing the South San Francisco based biotech as it advances its AI-enabled cell stress sensing platform and oncology pipeline. The round, led by Surveyor Capital with participation from new and existing investors, will fund IND-enabling work and early clinical trials for Soley\u2019s lead acute myeloid leukemia (AML) program and a second solid-tumor asset, while also expanding non-oncology programs in neurodegenerative and metabolic diseases and scaling the platform. – learn more<\/a><\/p>\n LA Exits<\/p>\n CareRev<\/a> is being acquired by IntelyCare<\/a>, which is combining its post-acute healthcare staffing platform with CareRev\u2019s on-demand workforce marketplace for acute care. The deal creates one of the more comprehensive clinical labor platforms in the market, spanning clinician-facing job boards, internal resource pool tools, contingent labor and recruiter solutions to help health systems manage permanent and flexible staff in one place. Both brands will continue operating under their existing names while integrating offerings for hospitals, health systems and clinicians. – learn more<\/a><\/p>\n