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PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Online dating platform Bumble plans to lay off about 240 employees, or roughly 30% of its global workforce.

In a securities filing, Bumble disclosed that its board approved the cuts this week as it “realigns its operating structure to optimize execution on its strategic priorities.” The Austin, Texas-based company expects to see $40 million in annual cost savings spanning from the workforce reductions, much of which it says it will invest in product and technology development.

“These decisions were not made lightly, and we are deeply grateful for the contributions of every employee impacted,” Bumble said in a statement sent to The Associated Press Wednesday — adding that it was now focused on “moving forward in a way that strengthens our core business” and “positions us for future growth.”

Shares for Bumble soared more than 23% following the news. Its stock traded at just over $6.40 as of Wednesday afternoon.

Bumble did not immediately specify when it would implement the layoffs or which roles would be affected. But its securities filing signaled that the process would extend into later in the year — noting that it expects to incur costs related to the layoffs, including severance for impacted employees, amounting to anywhere between $13 million to $18 million primarily in its third and fourth fiscal quarters.

In a note to employees Wednesday, Bumble CEO and founder Whitney Wolfe Herd wrote that “Bumble, like the online dating industry itself, is at an inflection point.” She noted that the company has been “rebuilding” in recent months, which “requires hard decisions.”

Wolfe Herd founded Bumble in 2014, just two years after co-founding Tinder in 2012. She had previously served as Bumble’s CEO from 2020 through January 2024, and stepped back into the top seat in March.

Bumble has struggled on the market since going public in 2021. While shares popped up on Wednesday, its stock is still down more than 35% over the last year — and nearly 92% since its February 2021 debut.

In its most recent first quarter earnings, Bumble reported a total revenue of about $247 million — down nearly 8% from the same period a year ago. The company said Wednesday that it expects to rake between $244 million and $249 million for the second quarter of its 2025 fiscal year. That’s up from previous estimates — but still lower than the $269 million it reported for its second quarter in 2024.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Legislation introduced Wednesday in Congress would block Chinese artificial intelligence systems from federal agencies as a bipartisan group of lawmakers pledged to ensure that the United States would prevail against China in the global competition over AI.

“We are in a new Cold War, and AI is the strategic technology at the center,” said Republican Rep. John Moolenaar of Michigan, chairman of the House Select Committee on China, as he opened a hearing on the matter. “The future balance of power may very well be determined by who leads in AI.”

About five months ago, a Chinese technology startup called DeepSeek introduced an AI model that rivaled platforms from OpenAI and Google in performance, but cost only a fraction to build. This raised concerns that China was catching up to U.S. despite restrictions on chips and other key technologies used to develop AI.

That race is now a central part of the U.S.-China rivalry, and so much is at stake that the U.S. must win, witnesses told the committee.

The two countries are “in a long-term techno-security competition that will determine the shape of the global political order for the coming years,” said Thomas Mahnken, president and CEO of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.

Jack Clark, co-founder and head of policy at Anthropic, said AI has built-in values.

“I know that AI systems are a reflection of the societies that are built from. AI built in democracies will lead to better technology for all of humanity. AI built in authoritarian nations will ... be inescapably intertwined and imbued with authoritarianism,” Clark said. “We must take decisive action to ensure America prevails.”

Earlier this year, Chris Lehane, OpenAI’s head of global affairs, told reporters that the U.S. and China were the only two countries in the world that could build AI at scale. The competition, which he described as one between democratic AI and autocratic AI, is “very real and very serious,” and the stakes are “enormous,” he said, for “the global rails of AI will be built by one of those two countries.”

The 2025 AI Index Report by Stanford University’s Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence center has the U.S. in the lead in producing top AI models. But the report noted China is rapidly closing the performance gap, reaching near parity in 2024 on several major benchmarks. It also showed that China leads in AI publications and patents.

At the hearing, Clark urged the lawmakers to maintain and strengthen export controls of advanced chips to China.

“This competition fundamentally runs on compute,” he said. The U.S. must control the flow of powerful chips to China, Clark said, “or else you’re giving them the tools they will need to build powerful AI to harm American interests.”

Mark Beall, Jr., president of government affairs at The AI Policy Network, said there are “a number of very glaring gaps” in the U.S. export controls that have allowed China to obtain controlled chips. Lawmakers earlier this year introduced a bill to track such chips to ensure they would not be diverted to the wrong hands.

The bill announced Wednesday would ban Chinese AI systems in the federal government. Sponsors are Reps. Ritchie Torres, D-N.Y., and Darin LaHood, R-Ill., and Sens. Rick Scott, R-Fla., and Gary Peters, D-Mich.

“The U.S. must draw a hard line: hostile AI systems have no business operating inside our government,” Moolenaar said.

Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi of Illinois, the committee’s top Democrat, said AI controlled by foreign adversaries “poses a direct threat to our national security, our data and our government operations.”

The bill seeks to identify AI systems developed by foreign adversaries and ban their use in the U.S. government, with exceptions for use in research and counterterrorism.

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AP Business Writer Kelvin Chan in London contributed to this report.

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This story has been corrected to reflect that the name of the Chinese technology start-up is DeepSeek, not DeekSeek.