Grindr is buying its way into health care, snapping up PrEP provider Freddie for $250 million.
Grindr will acquire telehealth company Freddie, which provides PrEP medication to prevent HIV transmission, in a cash-and-stock deal worth $250 million, according to a new report. It's the dating app's first major acquisition and its most concrete move yet beyond matchmaking. CEO George Arison says the plan is to fold PrEP access directly into the Grindr app, offering the medication at little to no cost. Freddie will merge with Woodwork, the telehealth service Grindr launched last year, into a single Grindr Health offering.
Arison calls the deal the "logical next step," and that's not pure spin: PrEP uptake has lagged well behind who could benefit from it, and folding prescriptions into an app millions of gay and bisexual men already use daily removes a real access barrier. But Grindr is also a company that, per this same report, agreed to pay 26 million pounds to settle a lawsuit over sharing users' HIV statuses, which makes handing it more sensitive health data a trust exercise, not just a product pitch.
Call it health care with a built-in audience - and a company whose data-handling history gives that audience good reason to read the privacy policy twice.