Bending Spoons company profile: valuation, funding & revenue

This Bending Spoons company profile covers the company's valuation, revenue, funding rounds, investors and history. Bending Spoons works in consumer software, with a focus on acquiring and operating digital products. It was founded in 2013 and is headquartered in Milan, Italy. Its latest valuation on record is About US$18.4 billion at IPO pricing (June 2026). Every figure links to a public source, and anything the company hasn't disclosed is marked as such.

Revenue

Funding history

Bending Spoons timeline

Key dates from the sources on this page, oldest first. Metric snapshots are listed after the funding events.

• 2013 — Bending Spoons is founded in Milan by Luca Ferrari (CEO), Francesco Patarnello, Matteo Danieli, Luca Querella and Tomasz Greber.
• 2024 — Equity round: See source, valuing the company at About US$2.8B.
• Oct 2025 — Equity round (primary and secondary): US$710M (US$270M primary, US$440M secondary), valuing the company at US$11B pre-money. Investors: T. Rowe Price (lead); Baillie Gifford, Cox Enterprises, Durable Capital, Fidelity, Foxhaven, Radcliff.
• Jun 2026 — IPO (Nasdaq): US$1.68B, valuing the company at About US$18.4B. Investors: Public offering at US$29 per share.

Investors

Overview

Bending Spoons buys established digital products, rebuilds them on its own technology and runs them with small, highly skilled teams, aiming to make them more profitable and, it says, better for users. Its portfolio includes some of the internet's best-known brands: Evernote, WeTransfer, Vimeo, Eventbrite, Meetup, Komoot, Brightcove, Issuu, StreamYard and Remini, and it agreed to buy AOL from Yahoo. Few technology companies have grown through acquisitions as quickly, and Bending Spoons has become Italy's most valuable technology startup.

Luca Ferrari, the CEO, Francesco Patarnello, Matteo Danieli and Luca Querella, who are Italian, and Tomasz Greber, who is Polish, founded Bending Spoons in Copenhagen in 2013 before moving it to Milan. The founders initially built their own apps, including photo and video editors and fitness apps, and became skilled at growing apps through performance marketing and subscription pricing. They gradually shifted from building new apps to buying existing ones, finding that they could create more value by improving products that already had large user bases.

The Bending Spoons playbook

Bending Spoons' approach after an acquisition usually follows a pattern:

• Rebuild the technology: it moves products onto its own shared infrastructure, often rewriting large parts of the code, which reduces costs and makes the product easier to maintain.
• Restructure the team: it frequently lays off most or all of the acquired company's staff and runs the product with a much smaller team from its own organisation.
• Change pricing: it often raises subscription prices and limits free plans, increasing revenue per user.
• Invest in the product: it says it improves reliability and features over time, once the rebuild is complete.

This model has been compared to private equity, but Bending Spoons emphasises that it doesn't buy companies to sell them; it intends to own and run products indefinitely.

Major acquisitions

• Evernote (2022): the note-taking app, which had struggled for years; Bending Spoons cut staff, moved operations to Europe and raised prices.
• WeTransfer (2024): the file-sharing service, followed by large layoffs.
• Meetup, Komoot, Brightcove and others: communities, outdoor navigation and video hosting for businesses.
• Vimeo (2025): the video hosting company, acquired in a deal worth about US$1.38 billion, taking it private from the stock market.
• Eventbrite (2025): the ticketing platform, agreed in a deal of about US$500 million.
• AOL (2025): agreed to buy the internet pioneer, still used by millions for email, from Yahoo.
• Airtable (2026): completed the acquisition of the no-code database and app-building company.
• Miro (2026): agreed in September 2026 to buy the visual collaboration company at an enterprise value of US$1.355 billion; see our Miro profile.

Funding

Bending Spoons has funded acquisitions with a mix of equity, debt and cash flow. A 2024 round valued it at about US$2.8 billion. In October 2025 it announced US$710 million in equity at an US$11 billion pre-money valuation, comprising US$270 million of new money and US$440 million of shares sold by existing holders. Accounts advised by T. Rowe Price led, with Baillie Gifford, Cox Enterprises, Durable Capital Partners, Fidelity, Foxhaven and Radcliff. It said the money would support further acquisitions and its AI capabilities. It has also raised large debt facilities from banks to finance deals.

Business model

Bending Spoons earns money mainly from subscriptions to its apps, with some advertising and business software revenue. Because it runs products with lean teams on shared infrastructure, it can achieve high profit margins once a rebuild is complete. The company doesn't publish revenue figures, so we show revenue as not disclosed. Its portfolio collectively reaches hundreds of millions of users.

Criticism

Bending Spoons' approach is controversial. Mass layoffs after acquisitions, such as at Evernote, WeTransfer and Vimeo, have drawn criticism from employees and the tech press. Users have complained about price increases and reduced free plans. Supporters argue that many of the products it buys were losing money or stagnating, and that without a buyer some might have shut down. The company maintains that its products improve under its ownership and that its own employees are well paid and highly selected.

Bending Spoons at a glance

Bending Spoons is a Milan-based company founded in 2013 that acquires and operates digital products, including Evernote, WeTransfer, Vimeo, Eventbrite and AOL. It rebuilds products on its own technology and runs them with small teams. It raised US$710 million at an US$11 billion pre-money valuation in October 2025, led by T. Rowe Price.

Why the model works financially

Many mature internet products have loyal users but high costs: large teams, ageing code and expensive infrastructure. When growth slows, investors lose interest and the company may be sold at a low price. Bending Spoons buys at those prices, cuts costs sharply and raises revenue per user. Even a modest number of paying users can produce strong profits when costs are low. The model depends on making good purchases, executing rebuilds reliably and keeping enough users happy that cancellations don't outweigh price increases.

Talent strategy

Bending Spoons is known for an extremely selective hiring process, recruiting top graduates and engineers from across Europe and paying salaries well above Italian norms. It avoids rigid job titles and encourages employees to move between products. This concentrated talent is central to its claim that it can run many products with small teams. It also makes the company one of the most attractive tech employers in Italy, a country with a smaller startup scene than the UK, France or Germany.

Questions for users of acquired products

• Will pricing or plans change after the acquisition, and how much notice will you get?
• How easy is it to export your data if you decide to leave?
• Will features you rely on be maintained, changed or removed?

Latest developments (October 2026)

Bending Spoons is now a public company. It priced its Nasdaq IPO on 30 June 2026 at US$29 per share, above its US$26 to US$28 range, raising about US$1.68 billion and valuing it at roughly US$18.4 billion, according to Quartz and IFR. Shares began trading under the ticker BSP on 1 July and rose about 40% on their first day. Its filing showed 2025 revenue of about US$1.31 billion and first-quarter 2026 revenue of US$601 million. Because it is listed, we no longer include it in our private company rankings; the private funding history above is kept for reference.

What to watch

Watch for new acquisitions, how Vimeo, Eventbrite and AOL perform under its ownership, debt levels, any IPO plans and continued debate about its labour practices. Our guide to the largest European startups compares Bending Spoons with other European tech companies.

Takeaways

Users of acquired products should expect price and plan changes. Founders of mature products now have a well-funded potential buyer. Investors should weigh strong profitability against reputational and integration risks.

Sources

Every figure on this page comes from the public sources below. Where sources disagreed, we used the company's own announcement or a primary news report. Private-company data changes; check the date beside each figure.

1. Quartz
2. Bernama (company press release)
3. Pulse 2.0