Milan-based tech group Bending Spoons completed a Nasdaq IPO in 2026, briefly pushing its market capitalization above $25 billion. Although the stock has softened since that initial spike, the company’s market value remains meaningfully higher than its previous private valuation of $11 billion.
Users, revenue and portfolio
Bending Spoons’ portfolio includes recognizable digital brands such as Meetup, Eventbrite, WeTransfer, and a range of media and productivity apps acquired in recent years (including Vimeo, Brightcove, Evernote, and Remini). According to its filing, as of March 2026 the group’s offerings reached over 500 million monthly active users and more than 9 million monthly paying customers. The company reported $1.31 billion in revenue for 2025.
Acquisition-and-integrate playbook
The group’s strategy resembles private equity in that it targets established products, then restructures them to improve financial performance. The company emphasizes a key distinction: it intends to keep acquired businesses long-term and says it has never sold a purchased business. Implementation typically involves changes to product experience and underlying technology, revised monetization and pricing, and organizational reorganizations including staff reductions—measures that have sparked controversy.
Company executives contend that despite aggressive changes, customer retention has remained "remarkably stable."
Major deals and their fallout
Bending Spoons had carried out acquisitions prior to 2022 (for example Remini), but the most prominent transactions came more recently. In 2022 it bought Filmic and later laid off the entire staff in December 2023. The company acquired Evernote in a deal announced in 2022 and closed in early 2023; that takeover was followed by layoffs and reductions to Evernote’s free tier.
The first half of 2024 saw an intense wave of activity with acquisitions including Meetup, Mosaic Group, and StreamYard. In July 2024 the company acquired Issuu and WeTransfer; the latter later experienced staff cuts and tighter limits on its free plan. In November 2024 Bending Spoons proposed a $233 million all-cash take-private for video platform Brightcove. In early 2025 it added Komoot and Harvest to its list of acquisitions.
The company announced a $1.38 billion all-cash deal to acquire Vimeo, which closed in the latter half of 2025 and was followed by substantial layoffs affecting most of the video team. It also completed acquisitions of AOL, Eventbrite (announced December 2025 for roughly $500 million), and Tractive in 2025–2026. The Eventbrite price was far below that company’s $1.76 billion valuation when it went public in 2018. Some founders and former executives of acquired companies have publicly criticized Bending Spoons’ post-acquisition decisions.
Headcount, efficiency and AI
Bending Spoons reports having added 1,830 full-time-equivalent roles through the acquisitions of AOL, Eventbrite and Vimeo, while also having "parted ways" with many employees and expecting further reductions. The company stated it expects only a few hundred employees to remain once the transformations of those businesses are substantially complete later in 2026.
The core company—so-called "Spooners" who pass a selective hiring process—remains small at roughly 620 people. In 2025 the firm hired 286 individuals from about 800,000 job applications. Despite limited growth in core headcount, reported productivity rose: revenue per full-time-equivalent Spooner increased from $1.12 million in 2023 to $2.57 million in 2025, and was $0.97 million in Q1 2026. Bending Spoons argues that AI-driven gains and efficiency measures help it accomplish more with fewer people and improve the scalability of its acquisition-and-transformation model.
Financing, ownership and future pipeline
Although Bending Spoons started as a bootstrapped company, it raised equity multiple times in 2022, 2024 and 2025 and counted high-profile backers such as Eric Schmidt, Mike Krieger and Xavier Niel, together with celebrity investors. After the IPO the four co-founders—Matteo Danieli, Luca Ferrari, Francesco Patarnello and Luca Querella—became paper billionaires while retaining more than 80% of voting power.
The company says it screened over 2,500 acquisition opportunities in 2025, analyzed roughly 200 in depth and completed six deals. It also reported identifying more than 1,000 digital businesses (private and public) as potential future targets, representing nearly $400 billion in aggregate estimated revenue for 2025.
Bending Spoons warns that a period of broader market uncertainty could provide opportunities to acquire businesses at more favorable valuations, and expects to continue pursuing large-scale deals: the firm notes that its first acquisition cost about $10,000, whereas it is now pursuing multi-billion-dollar transactions.
Conclusion
Bending Spoons’ Nasdaq listing underlines investor appetite for its acquisition-led growth model: the company has rapidly expanded its portfolio and revenue while centralizing product, engineering and monetization. At the same time, its playbook—particularly price changes and workforce reductions—has prompted criticism and raises questions about how the company will balance efficiency goals with product stewardship as it acquires more large, public brands.
