Grindr Offers Employees up to $300,000 to cover IVF and Surrogacy, Challenging Business Leaders to Address Financial Barriers to Parenthood for LGBTQ+

Grindr’s CEO, George Arison , a father through surrogacy, has been a vocal advocate for policy goals that align with Men Having Babies’ Fertility Equality initiative. The generous assistance provided to employees seeking to become parents through surrogacy sets a new benchmark for workplace family building benefits. ?

Men Having Babies (MHB) commends Grindr for its new employee family building benefits, starting in 2025. The gay dating app teamed up with Carrot Fertility to offer coverage of up to $300,000 over 5 years for each employee who has expenses associated with fertility treatments, surrogacy, or adoption, in their path to parenthood.

According to Grindr, employees will get expert guidance, access to top providers, and seamless expense management, making what can be a stressful process much easier.

Grindr’s CEO, George Arison, is a dad through surrogacy, who started his journey at the Men Having Babies conference in 2017. Two years later, he married his husband Robert Luo. As he recounted in an interview on Good Morning America, in the fall of that same year, their children, Luka and Emilia, were born nine days and more than 300 miles apart.

Even before the announcement about the 2025 benefits, Arison had been a vocal advocate for policy goals that closely align with MHB’s Fertility Equality initiatives. “It is vital to advocate on behalf of our community by pushing to bring [family building] costs down, which are uniquely high for gay men, whether by allowing insurance-covered IVF treatments to be accessible in cases of surrogacy or by making family formation expenses tax deductible, like other healthcare expenses,” he stated on GMA.

“We want every person who works at Grindr to have as fair of an opportunity as possible to build a family if they want to do that,” said Arison. “This is extremely expensive. I know because I’ve gone through it.”

Even in the early days, Arison was aware of the cost barrier for gay men. “It took Robert as much time, energy and money to engineer our family as for me to found a company,” he?told the New York Times back in 2019. And as it turns out, Grindr’s coverage amount, $300k per employee, may not be a random number: that is the amount the couple spent over three years for their own dual surrogacy journey.

In September 2024, two years after becoming CEO at Grindr, Arison publicly urged California Governor Gavin Newsom to sign the state’s IVF mandate bill?that includes an expansion of infertility treatments to include IVF and third-party reproduction for the LGBTQ+ community.

Earlier that year, Arison organized a Daffy fundraising campaign where he matched every donation to Men Having Babies, in order to assist with MHB’s advocacy work to expand fertility equality bills, which significantly reduce surrogacy costs for intended parents.

Arison raised the issue of fertility equality on numerous occasions, including a 2023 interview on the “Startup Dad” podcast, where he revealed his intention to help employees who wish to become parents and who need financial assistance. “I’m very fortunate that I’ve had a good career and we could afford surrogacy, but for a lot of people it’s a massive constraint on being able to do it because it is so expensive,” he told podcast host Adam Fishman. “This is very on top of my mind because I just spent an hour this morning with our insurance broker talking about how we can potentially get this included on Grindr’s health insurance. I think if one company should figure this out it’s Grindr, given that we’re in the business of creating love among gay and bi men, so, internally we should solve this and hopefully can push other people to solve it as well.”

Recognized as “one of few openly gay men leading a public company,” George Arison is setting a powerful precedent in addressing the financial barriers to parenthood for LGBTQ+ individuals. His advocacy for fertility equality—both within Grindr and in the broader corporate world—challenges other leaders to follow suit. “We hope that by being at the forefront of American business on family formation, we not only offer our employees a critical benefit, but show other companies what is possible and encourage them to do the same,” said Arison. By turning his personal experience into a mission to support others, Arison is paving the way for more inclusive and equitable family-building opportunities, making Grindr not just a platform for connection but a catalyst for broader social change.

Grindr has around 150 employees globally, and plans to expand its team through 2025, according to BNN Bloomberg. The company will grow headcount in a “moderately paced way” Arison said in the interview, adding that he envisions hiring around 50 people over the next 12 months.

MHB's Employer Surrogacy Benefits Initiative

To encourage more employers to offer inclusive workplace benefits, Men Having Babies developed an advanced searchable database of companies that offer benefits to support LGBTQ+ family formation, and we are adding dozens of employers monthly. We also launched a web and social media campaign featuring community members who received significant workplace benefits. Additionally, MHB is in the process of developing a unique toolkit to help men advocate for benefits at companies that do not currently offer inclusive benefits, or whose benefits do not apply to surrogacy, or whose benefits exclude overseas employees.