Gay hookup app provider Grindr LLC has a new majority owner with the company taking a majority investment from Beijing Kunlun Tech Co.

According to The New York Times the Chinese gaming company has taken 60 percent of Grindr on a $155 million valuation, with the remainder of shares in the company to be owned by Grindr employees and founder Joel Simkhai.

“We have users in every country in the world, but in order to get to the next phase of our business and grow faster, we needed a partner,” Grindr Chief Operating Officer Carter McJunkin told the paper, before adding that the pairing made sense due to Beijing Kunlun’s digital expertise, and its agreement to let Grindr’s founders continue its operating structure and retain its current team.

“For nearly seven years, Grindr has self-funded its growth, and in doing so, we have built the largest network for gay men in the world,” Grindr Chief Executive Officer and Founder Simkhai said in a separate blog post. “We have taken this investment in our company to accelerate our growth, to allow us to expand our services for you, and to continue to ensure that we make Grindr the number one app and brand for our millions of users.”

Strange pairing

The report claims that for Beijing Kunlun the part acquisition offers a chance to expand beyond its core gaming assets and “into other lifestyle categories, as well as markets outside China,” but given Grindr only offers a gay hookup app it’s not clear how that is a “lifestyle category.”

Grindr itself does offer some impressive stats, with the app seeing two million regular visitors every day, and the company is reported to have done $32 million in revenue in 2014 (the last year records are available), up from $25 million in 2013.

The company is said to be looking at expanding into “solving more problems” for Grindr’s core gay user group after a failed attempt to enter the straight hookup space, including things like places to go and things to do, but the travel and lifestyle segment covering the LGBT community is already saturated, so it’s not clear how they can leverage their audience that primarily uses their service to find other men to sleep with to, say, provide information about luxury gay cruises or gay-friendly places to visit.

Prior to this investment, Grindr had never raised venture capital before and had been bootstrapped since its launch in 2008.

Image credit: amandahinault/Flickr/CC by 2.0