Bending Spoons, the 13-year-old Italian app developer, completed a Nasdaq listing today. The stock opened at a valuation above $18 billion and ended the trading day about 40% higher.
Company model and strategy
Headquartered in Milan, Bending Spoons has spent the past decade quietly acquiring well-known but struggling internet brands — including Meetup, Eventbrite, Vimeo, WeTransfer and others. Rather than buying to flip, the company’s stated approach is to invest in technology to transform these businesses and keep them long term.
Co-founder and chief product officer Matteo Danieli told TechCrunch: “We want to place ourselves as an operator that takes beloved brands and makes them much better.”
Controversies and operational choices
The company’s approach has prompted controversy at times, particularly around layoffs tied to integrations. Still, Bending Spoons reports revenue growth and says AI has accelerated its product development: Danieli told TechCrunch that over the past year and a half they saw "an incredible acceleration" in shipping new features and creating user value.
AI roots and early failures
The firm’s F-1 filing includes a chapter titled “AI before it was cool,” referencing early work with algorithms and machine learning at the founders’ prior startup, Evertale. Evertale — an attempt at an automatically generated life-journal — failed, but taught lessons that shaped the Bending Spoons playbook. The founders (Luca Ferrari, Francesco Patarnello, Luca Querella and Matteo Danieli) say that experience helped them focus on reducing the role of luck in achieving growth.
Operational philosophy and pricing
Bending Spoons emphasizes operational rigor and experimentation. The company says it leverages sophisticated tracking, analytics and experimentation tools to inform product and pricing choices. That has sometimes led to releasing features for free to spur word-of-mouth and, at other times, to price increases that drew complaints from long-term subscribers. Danieli maintains that customer retention has remained “remarkably stable.”
Evernote and other acquisitions
The Evernote acquisition attracted particular scrutiny because it was one of the first genuinely beloved products the company bought. Bending Spoons highlights the AI-heavy Evernote v11 update as a turning point, and says many subscribers — including Evernote co-founder Phil Libin — ultimately praised the changes.
Funding history and key metrics
Before the IPO, Bending Spoons was valued at $11 billion in a private equity round that included venture capital firms and prominent individuals from tech and entertainment. The company recalls earlier skepticism from VCs about its model; Danieli says they received many "you’re crazy" reactions over the years. The company’s tagline reflects that attitude: “Impossible. Maybe.”
The firm has also focused heavily on hiring and culture. Co-founder Luca Ferrari spent the early years building recruiting and culture processes to identify talent, especially young candidates without long track records.
SEC filings show efficiency gains: revenue per full-time equivalent employee rose from $1.12 million in 2023 to $2.57 million in 2025, and was $0.97 million in Q1 2026, figures the company attributes in part to progress on AI.
Listing celebrations and next steps
For the listing, Bending Spoons brought the entire company to New York for a one-day celebration. Danieli said the trip was both a way to access liquidity needed for the company’s acquisitive strategy and an opportunity to enjoy the moment with colleagues. After the ceremony, the company plans to continue pursuing acquisitions, viewing the depressed valuations in parts of the SaaS market as an attractive chance to deploy capital.
Conclusion
Bending Spoons’s Nasdaq debut underscores how a buy-and-build strategy combined with AI-driven product upgrades can appeal to public markets. The approach has generated operational debate, but the company’s financial metrics and investor appetite for AI-fueled growth helped push the listing to a strong opening.
