French games firm Voodoo has made a surprise swoop for BeReal, acquiring the social media platform for €500m.
BeReal has 40m active users, and was founded in 2019. Users of the app receive a push notification prompting them to post a photo of whatever they are doing within a two-minute window every day.
After two years of explosive growth, “expansion stabilised” while BeReal “focused on building out its infrastructure,” according to Voodoo. BeReal’s biggest markets are the USA, France and UK, and it says that half of its users in those markets use the app at least six days a week.
“BeReal is now at an inflection point in its development,” said Voodoo in a blog announcing the deal. “By leveraging Voodoo’s platform and expertise, BeReal will now have the opportunity to further innovate around new features and refocus on growth through organic and paid marketing across markets.”
Aymeric Roffé, who is currently CEO of Voodoo-owned Wizz, will take over as CEO of BeReal. BeReal founder and CEO Alexis Barreyat will work on the handover and integration into Voodoo before leaving to ‘build new products’.
“Voodoo is uniquely positioned to help BeReal unlock its full potential as a next generation social platform,” Voodoo’s blog continues. “Voodoo will actively help BeReal accelerate product development and user growth, leaning on a decade of experience in building and growing iconic mobile products such as Helix Jump, Mob Control, Block Jam 3D, and the social network Wizz.”
Voodoo co-founder and CEO said Alexandre Yazdi added: “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.”
As we reported back in May 2023, Voodoo was one of the first game companies to seize the opportunity in hypercasual games, but has since pivoted its business to focus on publishing fewer, more robust hybridcasual games.
