Bending Spoons’ 4 cofounders this week joined the billionaire ranks.
CEO Luca Ferrari’s stake within the Milan-based tech conglomerate is now reportedly value $1.4 billion, whilst cofounders Matteo Danieli, Luca Querella, and Francesco Patarnello every hang stakes value $1.3 billion, in keeping with Forbes estimates in keeping with shareholder information printed through the Italian Industry Check in.
The valuations come at the heels of Bending Spoons’ newest investment spherical: $270 million from buyers together with T. Rowe Value and previous backers Baillie Gifford, Cox Enterprises, Sturdy Capital Companions, and Constancy, plus a $440 million secondary percentage sale through current shareholders. It’s unclear whether or not any of the cofounders offered inventory within the secondary transaction. Bending Spoons has declined to touch upon its cofounders’ stakes.
In spite of its catchy identify, Bending Spoons has stayed remarkably underneath the radar. The 12-year-old outfit normally makes headlines best when it provides some other recognizable emblem to its rising portfolio — maximum just lately this previous week, when it agreed to obtain AOL. for an undisclosed quantity.
However Bending Spoons isn’t a conventional inner most fairness company or a natural monetary funding automobile. Its center of attention is on obtaining underperforming however well-liked tech manufacturers, then remodeling them to serve thousands and thousands of customers extra successfully.
The corporate has a tendency to make information when it restructures those bought corporations, incessantly via important layoffs, or makes debatable adjustments to liked merchandise — or each on the subject of Evernote and WeTransfer.
Nonetheless, Bending Spoons itself stays in large part unknown, despite the fact that its roster of goods has served greater than one thousand million other folks, with over 300 million per month lively customers and 10 million paying consumers. Right here’s what you wish to have to grasp in regards to the corporate reshaping one of the vital web’s maximum recognizable manufacturers.
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What’s Bending Spoons?
Bending Spoons describes itself as an organization that acquires and transforms virtual companies. Having grown to a headcount of 400 to 500 “Spooners,” its primary center of attention is on improving services and products that others have created.
Then again, it didn’t get started that means — the Bending Spoons’ founders had taken a stab at development their very own apps and merchandise prior to ultimately transferring their center of attention.
The little-known backstory is that Bending Spoons was once born out of the stays of Evertale, a Copenhagen-based startup that participated in Disrupt SF 2011’s Startup Alley and raised seed investment for its picture sharing app, Wink.
Evertale failed now not lengthy after, and buyers were given an out, however its founders and a few staff saved operating in combination, to start with on in-house apps. Quickly sufficient, the workforce made its first acquisition, adopted through many others, CEO and cofounder Luca Ferrari instructed the 20VC podcast in a unprecedented interview.
In 2020, Bending Spoons made an exception when it created and donated Immuni, Italy’s legitimate COVID-19 touch tracing app. However rather than that, it has most commonly been honing a system: Bending Spoons identifies a well-liked product it thinks it could enhance inside and outside, and buys it from house owners who’ve reached their limits.
After the purchase, Bending Spoons is the rest however a passive proprietor, making adjustments to the goods’ person enjoy and contours but in addition to the underlying tech and maximum particularly to outsiders, to monetization — together with pricing — and workforce group — together with headcount.
Whilst this center of attention on potency and income overlaps with inner most fairness methods, Bending Spoons claims a key distinction: it “objectives to carry perpetually, and hasn’t ever offered an bought industry.” It’s development a are living portfolio, now not gathering web relics or presiding over a tech graveyard.
To be transparent, Bending Spoons’ acquisition objectives up to now haven’t essentially been failing companies — many nonetheless had considerable person bases and income. However they’ve tended to be stagnant, not noted, or had house owners taking a look to go out. Let’s recap those key offers, and in addition what came about of their aftermath.
What corporations has Bending Spoons bought?
Whilst Bending Spoons bought a number of corporations between 2014 and 2021, together with AI picture enhancer Remini, its maximum notable acquisitions came about extra just lately.
In 2022, it bought Filmic, recognized for its well-liked video and picture modifying apps, and laid off all of the body of 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 prior to hitting hassle. Layoffs adopted the purchase, in addition to cuts to Evernote’s unfastened providing.
The primary part of following yr, 2024, was once specifically lively, with the acquisition of Meetup, app maker Mosaic Team, and Hopin’s StreamYard within the first part of the yr.
In July 2024, it went on to obtain the publishing platform Issuu and the record switch carrier WeTransfer, the place it later minimize body of workers and made adjustments to its unfastened plan, introducing stricter limits. Later within the yr, Bending Spoons introduced it could spend $233 million on an all-cash take-private deal to obtain video platform Brightcove.
The acquisitions have persisted apace in 2025, with acquisitions that come with the outside course planner Komoot and control device maker Harvest.
Bending Spoons additionally introduced its aim to achieve Vimeo in a $1.38 billion all-cash deal, and much more just lately, to obtain AOL from Yahoo. (Disclosure: each AOL and Yahoo are former house owners of TechCrunch, by which Yahoo keeps a small passion.)
In step with Bending Spoons, the acquisitions of AOL and Vimeo are anticipated to near through the tip of the yr, topic to straightforward final prerequisites and regulatory approvals, together with, on the subject of Vimeo, approval through its stockholders.
How a lot is Bending Spoons value?
As of the tip of October 2025, Bending Spoons is one in every of Europe’s uncommon tech decacorns (corporations valued at greater than $10 billion). The startup ultimate raised at a $2.8 billion valuation in 2024, making its latest newest spherical a vital step up.
Even though lengthy bootstrapped, Bending Spoons had in the past 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 trade bigs Eric Schmidt, Mike Krieger, and Xavier Niel; and performers The Weeknd, The Chainsmokers, and Maluma.
In step with Bending Spoons, its new investment will give a boost to long run acquisitions and funding in its proprietary era and AI features. This comes along with the $2.8 billion in debt financing the corporate disclosed because it introduced its aim to obtain AOL, debt that can fund the AOL deal and long run acquisitions.
What’s subsequent?
Bending Spoons says it intends to proceed pursuing new acquisitions that enlarge its portfolio of shopper and undertaking virtual merchandise, and it now has investment to manage to pay for extra outstanding objectives going ahead.
AOL and Vimeo already lift way more identify reputation than previous objectives, despite the fact that deal phrases stay undisclosed. The homes even have some succeed in. In pronouncing the AOL deal, Bending Spoons claimed that AOL stays one of the vital best 10 most-used e-mail suppliers on this planet, with 8 million day-to-day lively customers and 30 million per month lively customers. (No longer lengthy prior to obtaining AOL, Bending Spoons was once additionally rumored to be eyeing app maker Elysium and Typeform, the Barcelona-based SaaS corporate recognized for its shape advent equipment.)
Probably to give a boost to its persisted efforts to obtain corporations, it additionally has openings throughout quite a lot of roles, with new hires to start with operating from its Milan headquarters prior to gaining the approach to paintings from workplaces in London, Madrid, and Warsaw, or remotely.
If truth be told, regardless of caution applicants that Bending Spoons is a “hard atmosphere,” the corporate has stated it already won greater than 600,000 task programs in 2025, a determine that can most probably climb as its contemporary offers generate further consideration.
