Milan's Bending Spoons Doubles Valuation at IPO, Now Controls AOL and Vimeo

A Quiet Giant Goes Public

When Bending Spoons listed on the Nasdaq this week, the Milan-based tech conglomerate briefly touched a market capitalization exceeding $25 billion - more than double its most recent private valuation of $11 billion. The company's portfolio reads like a nostalgia list of internet brands: AOL, Vimeo, Evernote, Meetup, WeTransfer, and Eventbrite. Yet until now, the entity controlling these properties has operated largely outside the tech media spotlight.

The IPO validated a business model that splits opinion across the industry. Bending Spoons acquires digital products with established user bases, then subjects them to sweeping operational overhauls. The formula combines technology upgrades and AI integration with aggressive cost-cutting measures, including workforce reductions that have sparked criticism from both laid-off employees and product communities.

According to the company's filing, its portfolio served over 500 million monthly active users and more than 9 million paying customers as of March 2026. Revenue for 2025 reached $1.31 billion, a figure that reflects both organic growth and the consolidation of recent acquisitions.

From Failed Startup to Acquisition Machine

Bending Spoons emerged from the ashes of Evertale, a Copenhagen-based photo-sharing startup that showcased at TechCrunch Disrupt SF in 2011 before collapsing shortly after raising seed funding for its app, Wink. Rather than disbanding entirely, the founders and a handful of employees regrouped and began working on in-house applications. The pivot to acquisitions came early, and CEO Luca Ferrari has described the shift as a recognition that buying existing products offered a faster path than building from scratch.

For years, the company operated without venture capital, a rarity in the tech ecosystem. That changed in 2020 when it created Immuni, Italy's official COVID-19 contact-tracing app, which it donated to the government. The project raised Bending Spoons' profile domestically and preceded its first equity raises in 2022, 2024, and 2025. Pre-IPO backers included Eric Schmidt, Instagram co-founder Mike Krieger, and French telecom entrepreneur Xavier Niel, alongside celebrity investors like Andre Agassi, Bradley Cooper, and The Weeknd.

The Playbook: Acquire, Transform, Retain

Bending Spoons distinguishes itself from traditional private equity by claiming it holds acquisitions indefinitely rather than flipping them for profit. The company frames its approach as building a permanent portfolio of digital brands, each integrated into a centralized infrastructure for product development, engineering, data analytics, and monetization.

After an acquisition closes, changes arrive swiftly. User interfaces are redesigned, features are added or removed, and underlying technology is rebuilt. Pricing strategies shift, often upward. Workforce reductions follow in nearly every case, sometimes eliminating entire teams. At Filmic, acquired in 2022, the entire staff was let go by December 2023. When Vimeo's acquisition closed in late 2025, layoffs affected most of the workforce, including the complete video team.

Co-founder and chief product officer Matteo Danieli acknowledged that the strategy has drawn scrutiny, particularly for products like Evernote that commanded loyal user bases. He defended the approach by pointing to what he described as "remarkably stable" customer retention rates despite the changes.

A Buying Spree Across Legacy Brands

The company's acquisition pace accelerated sharply after 2022. Evernote, once valued at $1 billion before encountering financial difficulties, was acquired in a deal announced in 2022 and finalized in early 2023. Layoffs followed, along with reductions to the free tier that prompted user backlash.

The first half of 2024 brought Meetup, app developer Mosaic Group, and Hopin's StreamYard into the fold within six months. July 2024 added publishing platform Issuu and file transfer service WeTransfer. At WeTransfer, subsequent staff cuts and stricter limits on the free plan led co-founder Nalden to publicly criticize Bending Spoons in December 2025, announcing plans to build a competing service.

In November 2024, Bending Spoons announced a $233 million all-cash deal to take video platform Brightcove private. Early 2025 brought route planner Komoot and management software maker Harvest. The company then announced its intention to acquire Vimeo for $1.38 billion in cash, followed quickly by a deal to acquire AOL from Yahoo for an undisclosed sum.

December 2025 brought Eventbrite into the portfolio for approximately $500 million, a steep discount from the company's $1.76 billion valuation at its 2018 IPO. The Vimeo, AOL, Eventbrite, and Tractive acquisitions all closed in 2026.

Efficiency Through Headcount Reduction

The company added 1,830 full-time employees through the AOL, Eventbrite, and Vimeo acquisitions alone. Most will not remain. Bending Spoons stated in its filing that once the transformation of these three businesses concludes later in 2026, it expects only a few hundred to stay.

These reductions operate separately from the core team of "Spooners," a designation reserved for employees who survive the company's notoriously selective hiring process. That group numbers around 620, growing slowly despite massive application volume: in 2025, Bending Spoons made 286 hires from roughly 800,000 applications.

Productivity per Spooner has surged, aided by AI adoption. Revenue per full-time equivalent Spooner climbed from $1.12 million in 2023 to $2.57 million in 2025, though it dipped to $0.97 million in the first quarter of 2026.

A Favorable Environment for More Deals

Bending Spoons views the current market as advantageous. The company noted in its filing that as many SaaS businesses struggle to adapt to changing conditions, its ability to expand earnings from acquired properties may improve. Economic uncertainty could also enable acquisitions at more favorable valuations.

The company sourced over 2,500 acquisition opportunities in 2025, conducted in-depth analyses of approximately 200, and completed six. Ferrari wrote in a letter accompanying the IPO that Bending Spoons has identified more than 1,000 digital businesses, both private and public, that could serve as future acquisition targets. Those businesses represent nearly $400 billion in aggregate estimated revenue for 2025.

The scale has shifted dramatically from the company's first acquisition, purchased for $10,000, to deals now measured in billions. Ferrari predicted that as AI enables the company to accomplish more with fewer people, the scalability of its acquisition and transformation model will continue to improve.

Founder Control and What Comes Next

Four co-founders remain at the helm: Matteo Danieli, Luca Ferrari, Francesco Patarnello, and Luca Querella. The IPO made them billionaires on paper while preserving their control through a dual-class share structure that grants them more than 80% of voting power.

Entrepreneur Joe Hyrkin, who sold Issuu to Bending Spoons in 2024, has pushed back against the narrative that the company acquires dying brands. Writing on LinkedIn after the IPO, he argued that the framing of "old internet brands" misses the point. The real value lies in acquiring products with genuine customer behavior and integrating them into a centralized system of product, engineering, data, monetization, AI, and operational discipline.

Whether that defense resonates will depend on how the portfolio evolves. At DailyTechWire, we've tracked the rise of operational-focused tech acquirers across Asia and Europe, and Bending Spoons represents the most ambitious version yet. The company's market cap suggests investors believe the formula works at scale. The question is whether the brands themselves, stripped of much of their original teams and reimagined through an efficiency lens, can sustain the user loyalty that made them acquisition targets in the first place.

The IPO provides Bending Spoons with currency for larger deals and the visibility that comes with public-market scrutiny. Ferrari's letter signals no slowdown. The playbook that started with a $10,000 acquisition is now aiming at billion-dollar take-privates, powered by AI and a conviction that fewer people can deliver more revenue. The next chapter will test whether that thesis holds as the portfolio grows and competition for legacy brands intensifies.