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, whereas cofounders Matteo Danieli, Luca Querella, and Francesco Patarnello every maintain stakes value $1.3 billion, in response to Forbes estimates based mostly on shareholder information printed 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 present 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.
Regardless of its catchy identify, Bending Spoons has stayed remarkably beneath the radar. The 12-year-old outfit sometimes makes headlines solely when it provides one other recognizable model to its rising portfolio — most just lately this previous week, when it agreed to amass AOL. for an undisclosed quantity.
However Bending Spoons isn’t a standard non-public fairness agency or a pure monetary funding car. Its focus is on buying underperforming however fashionable 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 via vital layoffs, or makes controversial adjustments to beloved merchandise — or each within the case of Evernote and WeTransfer.
Nonetheless, Bending Spoons itself stays largely unknown, despite the fact that its roster of merchandise has served greater than a billion individuals, with over 300 million month-to-month energetic customers and 10 million paying prospects. Right here’s what it’s good to know concerning 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 primary focus is on bettering services and products that others have created.
Nonetheless, it didn’t begin that manner — 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 group made its first acquisition, adopted by many others, CEO and cofounder Luca Ferrari informed 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 aside from that, it has largely been honing a method: Bending Spoons identifies a well-liked product it thinks it might probably enhance in and out, and buys it from house owners who’ve reached their limits.
After the acquisition, Bending Spoons is something however a passive proprietor, making adjustments to the merchandise’ person expertise and options but in addition to the underlying tech; monetization technique, together with pricing; and group group, together with headcount.
Whereas this concentrate on effectivity and income overlaps with non-public fairness methods, Bending Spoons claims a key distinction: it “goals to carry endlessly, and has by no means offered an acquired enterprise.” It’s constructing a stay portfolio, not accumulating 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 seeking to exit. Let’s recap these key offers, and in addition 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 just lately.
In 2022, it acquired Filmic, recognized for its fashionable video and picture enhancing apps, and laid off all the employees 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 minimize employees and made adjustments to its free plan, introducing stricter limits. Later within the yr, Bending Spoons introduced it might 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 open air route planner Komoot and administration software program maker Harvest.
Bending Spoons additionally introduced its intention to purchase Vimeo in a $1.38 billion all-cash deal, and much more just lately, to amass AOL from Yahoo. (Disclosure: each AOL and Yahoo are former house owners of TechCrunch, during which 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 circumstances and regulatory approvals, together with, within the case of Vimeo, approval by its stockholders.
How a lot is Bending Spoons value?
As of the tip of October 2025, Bending Spoons is one among 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 big step up.
Although lengthy bootstrapped, Bending Spoons had beforehand raised fairness financing a number of occasions, 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 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 may fund the AOL deal and future acquisitions.
What’s subsequent?
Bending Spoons says it intends to proceed pursuing new acquisitions that develop its portfolio of client and enterprise digital merchandise, and it now has funding to afford extra outstanding targets going ahead.
AOL and Vimeo already carry way more identify recognition than earlier targets, even when deal phrases stay undisclosed. The properties even have some attain. In saying the AOL deal, Bending Spoons claimed that AOL stays one of many high 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 kind 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 places of work in London, Madrid, and Warsaw, or remotely.
Actually, regardless of warning candidates that Bending Spoons is a “demanding surroundings,” the corporate has stated it already acquired greater than 600,000 job purposes in 2025, a determine that may seemingly climb as its latest offers generate extra consideration.
