What's Bending Spoons? All the pieces to learn about AOL’s acquirer

[ad_1] Bending Spoons’ 4 cofounders this week joined the billionaire ranks.

CEO Luca Ferrari’s stake within the Milan-based tech conglomerate is now reportedly price $1.4 billion, whereas cofounders Matteo Danieli, Luca Querella, and Francesco Patarnello every maintain stakes price $1.3 billion, in response to Forbes estimates based mostly on shareholder knowledge revealed by the Italian Enterprise Register.

The valuations come on the heels of Bending Spoons’ newest funding spherical: $270 million from traders together with T. Rowe Worth and earlier backers Baillie Gifford, Cox Enterprises, Sturdy Capital Companions, and Constancy, plus a $440 million secondary share sale by current shareholders. It’s unclear whether or not any of the cofounders bought inventory within the secondary transaction. Bending Spoons has declined to touch upon its cofounders’ stakes.

Regardless of its catchy identify, Bending Spoons has stayed remarkably underneath the radar. The 12-year-old outfit sometimes makes headlines solely when it provides one other recognizable model to its rising portfolio — most not too long ago this previous week, when it agreed to amass AOL. for an undisclosed quantity.

However Bending Spoons isn’t a standard personal fairness agency or a pure monetary funding car. Its focus is on buying underperforming however standard tech manufacturers, then reworking them to serve thousands and thousands of customers extra effectively.

The corporate tends to make information when it restructures these acquired corporations, usually by important layoffs, or makes controversial modifications to beloved merchandise — or each within the case of Evernote and WeTransfer.

Nonetheless, Bending Spoons itself stays largely unknown, regardless that its roster of merchandise has served greater than a billion folks, with over 300 million month-to-month energetic customers and 10 million paying prospects. Right here’s what you have to know in regards to the firm reshaping a few of the web’s most recognizable manufacturers.

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What's Bending Spoons?

Bending Spoons describes itself as an organization that acquires and transforms digital companies. Having grown to a headcount of 400 to 500 “Spooners,” its important focus is on improving services that others have created.

Nevertheless, it didn’t begin that means — the Bending Spoons’ founders had taken a stab at constructing their very own apps and merchandise earlier than finally shifting their focus.

The little-known backstory is that Bending Spoons was born out of the stays of Evertale, a Copenhagen-based startup that participated in Disrupt SF 2011’s Startup Alley and raised seed funding for its picture sharing app, Wink.

Evertale failed not lengthy after, and traders obtained an out, however its founders and a few workers saved working collectively, initially on in-house apps. Quickly sufficient, the workforce made its first acquisition, adopted by many others, CEO and cofounder Luca Ferrari instructed the 20VC podcast in a uncommon interview.

In 2020, Bending Spoons made an exception when it created and donated Immuni, Italy’s official COVID-19 contact tracing app. However apart from that, it has principally been honing a formulation: Bending Spoons identifies a preferred product it thinks it may enhance inside and outside, and buys it from house owners who've reached their limits.

After the acquisition, Bending Spoons is something however a passive proprietor, making modifications to the merchandise’ person expertise and options but additionally to the underlying tech; monetization technique, together with pricing; and workforce group, together with headcount.

Whereas this deal with effectivity and income overlaps with personal fairness methods, Bending Spoons claims a key distinction: it “goals to carry endlessly, and has by no means bought an acquired enterprise.” It's constructing a reside portfolio, not amassing web relics or presiding over a tech graveyard.

To be clear, Bending Spoons’ acquisition targets up to now haven’t essentially been failing companies — many nonetheless had substantial person bases and income. However they’ve tended to be stagnant, uncared for, or had house owners trying to exit. Let’s recap these key offers, and likewise what occurred of their aftermath.

What corporations has Bending Spoons acquired?

Whereas Bending Spoons acquired a number of corporations between 2014 and 2021, together with AI picture enhancer Remini, its most notable acquisitions occurred extra not too long ago.

In 2022, it acquired Filmic, recognized for its standard video and picture enhancing apps, and laid off your complete workers in December 2023.

In a deal additionally introduced in 2022 and finalized in early 2023, Bending Spoons additionally cquired Evernote, the note-taking app that had reportedly reached a $1 billion valuation earlier than hitting bother. Layoffs adopted the acquisition, in addition to cuts to Evernote’s free providing.

The primary half of following yr, 2024, was notably energetic, with the acquisition of Meetup, app maker Mosaic Group, and Hopin’s StreamYard within the first half of the yr.

In July 2024, it went on to amass the publishing platform Issuu and the file switch service WeTransfer, the place it later lower workers and made modifications to its free plan, introducing stricter limits. Later within the yr, Bending Spoons introduced it will spend $233 million on an all-cash take-private deal to amass video platform Brightcove.

The acquisitions have continued apace in 2025, with acquisitions that embrace the outside route planner Komoot and administration software program maker Harvest.

Bending Spoons additionally introduced its intention to amass Vimeo in a $1.38 billion all-cash deal, and much more not too long ago, to amass AOL from Yahoo. (Disclosure: each AOL and Yahoo are former house owners of TechCrunch, wherein Yahoo retains a small curiosity.)

In line with Bending Spoons, the acquisitions of AOL and Vimeo are anticipated to shut by the tip of the yr, topic to straightforward closing situations and regulatory approvals, together with, within the case of Vimeo, approval by its stockholders.

How a lot is Bending Spoons price?

As of the tip of October 2025, Bending Spoons is certainly one of Europe’s uncommon tech decacorns (corporations valued at greater than $10 billion). The startup final raised at a $2.8 billion valuation in 2024, making its latest newest spherical a major step up.

Although lengthy bootstrapped, Bending Spoons had beforehand raised fairness financing a number of instances, together with in September 2022 and early 2024. It additionally has VIPs on its cap desk, together with tennis and leisure stars Andre Agassi and Bradley Cooper; tech business bigs Eric Schmidt, Mike Krieger, and Xavier Niel; and performers The Weeknd, The Chainsmokers, and Maluma.

In line with Bending Spoons, its new funding will assist future acquisitions and funding in its proprietary expertise and AI capabilities. This comes along with the $2.8 billion in debt financing the corporate disclosed because it introduced its intention to amass AOL, debt that can fund the AOL deal and future acquisitions.

What’s subsequent?

Bending Spoons says it intends to proceed pursuing new acquisitions that increase its portfolio of shopper and enterprise digital merchandise, and it now has funding to afford extra distinguished targets going ahead.

AOL and Vimeo already carry much more identify recognition than earlier targets, even when deal phrases stay undisclosed. The properties even have some attain. In asserting the AOL deal, Bending Spoons claimed that AOL stays one of many prime 10 most-used e mail suppliers on the planet, with 8 million every day energetic customers and 30 million month-to-month energetic customers. (Not lengthy earlier than buying AOL, Bending Spoons was additionally rumored to be eyeing app maker Elysium and Typeform, the Barcelona-based SaaS firm recognized for its type creation instruments.)

Presumably to assist its continued efforts to amass corporations, it additionally has openings throughout varied roles, with new hires initially working from its Milan headquarters earlier than gaining the choice to work from workplaces in London, Madrid, and Warsaw, or remotely.

In reality, regardless of warning candidates that Bending Spoons is a “demanding surroundings,” the corporate has mentioned it already acquired greater than 600,000 job functions in 2025, a determine that can seemingly climb as its latest offers generate further consideration.