It’s a sweltering week in London, in the run up to the capital’s Pride celebrations, and Grindr’s senior leadership team has flown in from LA to talk privacy, product growth, and AI.
Grindr may be framed as a consumer dating and social app for the LGBTQ+ community, yet the themes on its agenda are the same ones keeping enterprise product teams up at night. There’s real value in studying how a platform with an extraordinarily engaged user base—averaging about an hour of daily use per person—tackles them.
Because Grindr’s open chat architecture places a grid of profiles front and centre, it generates one of the highest messaging volumes in the industry. Free users can view up to 99 profiles at a time (premium subscribers see up to 600), feeding more than 300 million chat events every day across roughly 14.5 million monthly active users. And that was before the company began layering AI chatbots into the experience.
If web search keywords were the “gold dust” of the early internet, real-time chat intent may be the new commodity, and Grindr is already mining millions of conversations to shape next-generation features. The question is: How do you do that responsibly?
While Londoners spill onto Soho’s pavements, escaping the heat with cold beers, TI stepped into a smart, air-conned hotel to meet AJ Balance, Grindr’s chief product officer.
Balance is no stranger to geospatial matchmaking. Before joining Grindr in 2021, the Stanford MBA spent three years at Uber, leading product for the driver team.
“There are clear parallels,” he agrees. “Connecting people locally but also at global scale is fundamentally the same challenge—matching two parties in physical space, in real time.”
Grindr CPO AJ Balance
For Balance, however, Grindr is more than a tech puzzle; it’s personal. “When I moved to West Hollywood and was coming out, Grindr helped me connect with people—and even reconnect with an old college friend who didn’t know I was gay,” he recalls. “This community is vibrant, global, and deeply supportive.”
New products and partnerships
Grindr’s product evolution over the past two years reflects a sharp shift in both strategy and scope. While still grounded in dating, it’s now branching into broader lifestyle, health, and travel use cases—many of which have emerged directly from user feedback.
“Users are way ahead of us in how they use the app,” notes Balance. “We’re just catching up to them.”
That catch-up includes a new wave of features like Right Now, a real-time bulletin board for spontaneous meetups; Roam, which lets users scout connections in cities they’re planning to visit (Balance notes that a quarter of its entire user base travels away from home on a weekly basis); and A-List, an AI tool that summarises chats and flags standout connections.
Recent moves also include more ambitious ventures, such as WoodWork, Grindr’s first foray into healthtech—an erectile‑dysfunction platform tailored to the queer community. The service connects users with clinicians through a partnership with OpenLoop Health, offering treatments alongside LGBTQ+‑specific safety guidance.
More than an app, Grindr wants to be ‘a global gaybourhood’
Balance is keen to stress that these aren’t just app extensions—they’re being developed as standalone businesses with external partners, marking a shift toward platform-as-ecosystem thinking.
Building around intent
According to Balance, Grindr’s core product philosophy hinges on user intention, not just demographics or behaviours. And rather than reshaping the core interface, Grindr layers modular features around distinct needs, be they spontaneous meetups, travel prep, or even quiet social browsing.
The CPO uses Right Now as a case in point. Rather than forcing this intent into the main grid, Grindr created a dedicated space where users could opt in to this more urgent mode of connection.
“Creating a space around a certain intention—like an immediate meetup—leads to much richer connections,” he explains. “And we didn’t have to abandon our core interface to do it.”
This modular approach—layering features rather than re-architecting the whole product—lets Grindr serve multiple user journeys without overcomplicating the experience.
It also happens to be monetisable—free users can post three times a week, with paid tiers offering more visibility. This fits neatly into the company’s freemium model.
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The platform maintains a robust free tier, which powers the community, while about 8% of users pay for advanced functionality like premium filters or enhanced access to intention-based features.
Balance adds that even traditionally “soft” metrics, like emotional resonance or chat depth, are tracked. “We measure conversations—how often they’re meaningful, not just opened and abandoned.”
AI integration
According to Balance, integrating AI into Grindr presented familiar challenges seen in past tech shifts—understanding what the technology can do, how it fits into existing systems, and identifying the right use cases.
“We often start with small, minimum viable products, test them with users, gather feedback, and iterate.”
One early successful experimentation with AI has been A-List, which summarises recent chats and highlights meaningful interactions. “On the Grid, you can end up talking to ten people in ten minutes,” he says. “A-List reminds you who stood out and what you talked about.”
Grindr A-List uses AI to highlight meaningful engagements
That feedback loop helped spark an AI ‘Wingman’ bot that suggests matches or helps refine conversation openers. Both tools arose from a core question: how do you reduce friction in forming real connections?
But AI isn’t just about features—it’s shaping the future of localisation and global growth, too. Grindr has grown organically into 190+ countries, but its formal expansion will rely on tools like translation and intent parsing to tailor user experiences at scale.
“Investing more in international markets in on our roadmap for the future,” says Balance. “AI helps us get there faster—and smarter.”
Privacy-as-architecture
Instead of building massive in-house models, Grindr runs its AI stack via Amazon Bedrock, enabling rapid experimentation while keeping privacy tightly controlled. All models operate entirely within Grindr’s infrastructure, as Balance claims: “No user data ever leaves our environment.”
Serving a community that can face real safety risks around the world, Grindr doesn’t treat privacy as a policy layer— the app claims that it is baked into the product’s DNA. “Even in parts of the US, it’s not always safe to be out,” Balance notes. “Grindr helps people find safe spaces—and that shapes everything we build.”
While the app does collect behavioural data—such as clicks, profile views, and feature usage—Balance says this is done with transparency and clear boundaries. “We follow a set of principles and give users upfront clarity on what’s being collected and why,” he explains. “And AI features are opt-in. Always.”
That stance was reinforced during Grindr’s recent UK visit, when CEO George Arison (who has lead the company since it went public in 2022) addressed Parliament amid growing concerns about data security.
Grindr CEO George Arison
The meeting followed a political scandal last year involving a Conservative MP who was tricked on Grindr and later shared colleagues’ phone numbers. Arison reiterated the company’s commitment to user protection, highlighting privacy-driven features like expiring photos, private mode, and upcoming secure photo sharing, emphasising that Grindr’s AI roadmap prioritises safety as much as functionality.
Separately, Grindr is facing a significant legal challenge in the UK. Law firm Austen Hays has filed a lawsuit on behalf of more than 11,000 users, alleging that the app unlawfully shared sensitive personal data—including sexual orientation, HIV status, and testing dates—with advertisers.
The alleged breaches date back to practices said to have ended before 2020 and are claimed to have caused emotional distress. Filed in London’s High Court and formally served in the US, the case could become one of the largest data privacy actions in UK legal history. Grindr denies the allegations, calling them outdated and inaccurate, and says it will vigorously defend itself.
Beyond the grid
In recent years, since the company became public, Grindr appears to have ramped up its social responsibility initiatives.
Through its not-for-profit division, Grindr for Equality, the platform works with NGOs to offer safety tools, sexual health resources, and advocacy campaigns, especially in high-risk regions.
During the US monkeypox outbreak, for instance, the app partnered with The Centres for Disease Control and Prevention to disseminate testing and vaccine information.
“In some places, Grindr might be the only place you can be yourself safely,” Balance says. “That responsibility doesn’t stop at the edge of the product.”
What sets Grindr apart isn’t just its vibrant community—it’s the precision of its focus. In an era where many platforms prioritise scale above all else, Grindr continues to design for depth, not just reach.
Yes, historic privacy challenges still loom, but the app’s evolving product strategy offers a compelling lesson: meaningful connection can’t be measured in metrics alone. “Connection isn’t just a metric,” emphasises Balance, before stepping out into the haze of London’s early evening sun.
