France-based mobile and game publisher company Voodoo announced it has acquired BeReal for €500 million. In connection with the acquisition, BeReal co-founder and CEO Alexis Barreyat will leave the company following a transition period. And Wizz CEO Aymeric Roffé (a Voodoo social media app) will become BeReal’s CEO.
BeReal is a Gen Z social network focused on authenticity. And with this deal, Voodoo further accelerates its diversification into consumer apps.
Voodoo – which has over 7 billion downloads worldwide across its apps – will be ideally positioned to deliver on BeReal’s potential synergies afforded by the platform’s significant global user base. And Voodoo plans to further invest in BeReal while providing its expertise in product strategy, growth, and infrastructure.
Launched in 2019, BeReal transformed social media by fostering genuine connections. Every day, users receive a push notification prompting them to post whatever they are doing within a two-minute window. Then the photos disappear after 24 hours. The lack of ‘likes’ or ‘followers’ creates a safe space for sharing real moments without social anxiety.
In 2022, BeReal became the #1 social networking app in Apple’s App Store and was the iPhone ‘App of the Year’ in Apple’s App Store Awards. Following two years of initial explosive organic user growth, BeReal’s expansion stabilized while it focused on building out its infrastructure.
Now, BeReal has over 40 million active users and is one of the most popular social networks in its three key markets: the USA, Japan, and France. And these users are highly engaged with the app: half of them use the app at least 6 days a week.
KEY QUOTE:
“BeReal achieved incredible user loyalty and growth, showing there is a universal need to share real, unfiltered experiences with close friends. We are very excited to bring our teams together and leverage Voodoo’s know-how and differentiated technologies to scale BeReal into the iconic social network for authenticity.”
- Alexandre Yazdi, Voodoo co-founder and CEO
