What is a bending spoon? Little-Known AOL and Vimeo Owners Now Revealed

Bending Spoons, the Milan-based tech giant that made headlines for its acquisitions of AOL and Vimeo, among others, listed on the Nasdaq this week, briefly surpassing $25 billion in market capitalization.

Bending Spoons’ stock price has fallen slightly since then, but its market capitalization is still double its previous private valuation of $11 billion, confirming investors’ preference for its playbook and portfolio that includes digital brands like Meetup, Eventbrite and WeTransfer.

Bending Spoons’ strategy shares similarities with private equity, but it retains the brands it acquires. It uses technology and AI, but focuses on making them more financially successful through often controversial price increases and layoffs.

Matteo Danieli, co-founder and chief product officer, told TechCrunch that the scrutiny comes from the fact that products like Evernote are truly loved by users. But he said customer retention has been “very stable” despite all the changes.

Bending Spoons’ own user base has grown significantly in the 13 years since its launch, especially in the past few years. As of March 2026, the portfolio serves more than 500 million monthly active users and more than 9 million monthly paying customers, according to the filing.

This also goes against the idea of ​​Bending Spoons taking over a dead company. This is the story that entrepreneur Joe Hyrkin has been fighting since selling his digital publishing platform Issuu to an Italian in 2024.

“‘Old Internet brand’ is the wrong framing,” Hyrkin wrote on LinkedIn after the IPO. “They buy from real customer behavior and then integrate that into a centralized system of product, engineering, data, monetization, AI and operational principles.” This appears to be working. Bending Spoons reported revenue of $1.31 billion in 2025. But the market cap indicates that investors expect much more.

How did Bending Spoon start?

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

Evertale failed shortly after and its investors were able to walk away, but the founder and two employees continued to collaborate, initially on an in-house app. Soon after, the team completed its first acquisition, followed by many others. CEO and co-founder Luca Ferrari told venture podcast 20VC in one of his rare interviews before the company decided to go public.

In 2020, Bending Spoons made an exception to its policy of no longer making its own products when it created and donated Immuni, Italy’s official COVID-19 contact tracing app. But other than that, I’ve mostly been honing the formula. That means identifying hot products that you think could be improved on, inside and out, and buying those products from owners who have reached their limits in some way.

This approach has long been orthogonal to VC and has kept Bending Spoons bootstrapped for years. However, it eventually increased self-funding several times, including in 2022, 2024, and 2025. Prior to the IPO, it also had VIP backers such as tech giants Eric Schmidt, Mike Krieger, and Xavier Niel. Featuring Andre Agassi, Bradley Cooper, Maluma, The Weeknd and The Chainsmokers.

What happens after the Bending Spoons acquisition?

After the acquisition, Bending Spoons will not be a passive owner making changes to the underlying technology as well as the user experience and features of the product. Monetization strategy, including pricing. Team organization, including headcount.

This focus on efficiency and returns overlaps with private equity strategies, but Bending Spoons claims an important distinction: “We aim to hold on to them forever and have never sold the businesses we acquire.” You’re building a live portfolio, not presiding over a technology graveyard.

What companies has Bending Spoons acquired?

Bending Spoons has acquired several companies between 2014 and 2021, including AI-based photo enhancer Remini, but its most notable acquisition was recent.

In 2022, it acquired Filmic, known for its popular video and photo editing app, and laid off its entire staff in December 2023.

In a deal announced in 2022 and confirmed in early 2023, Bending Spoons also acquired Evernote, a note-taking app that reportedly reached a valuation of $1 billion before its troubles. Since the acquisition, there have been layoffs and Evernote’s free services have been cut.

The following year, the first half of 2024, was so active that the acquisitions of Meetup, app manufacturer Mosaic Group, and Hoppin’s StreamYard were all accomplished within six months.

In July 2024, it acquired publishing platform Issuu and file transfer service WeTransfer, which later cut staff and changed its free plan to introduce tighter restrictions. In December 2025, WeTransfer co-founder Nalden criticized Bending Spoons’ decision and said he was building another file transfer service.

In November 2024, Bending Spoons announced that it would spend $233 million in an all-cash private deal to acquire video platform Brightcove. Acquisitions were also fast-tracked in early 2025 with route planner Komoot and management software maker Harvest.

Bending Spoons also announced its intention to acquire Vimeo in an all-cash deal worth $1.38 billion, and soon after announced its intention to acquire AOL from Yahoo for an undisclosed sum. (Disclosure: AOL and Yahoo are both former owners of TechCrunch, with Yahoo owning a small stake.)

In December 2025, Bending Spoons announced that it would acquire Eventbrite, another popular brand. This is only about $500 million, a far cry from the $1.76 billion the company was valued at when it went public in 2018.

The Vimeo deal closed in late 2025, followed by massive layoffs affecting most of the workforce, including the entire video team. Acquisitions of AOL, Eventbrite, and Tractive were also completed this year.

What’s next for Bending Spoons?

Four of Bending Spoons’ co-founders have been leading the company for several years: Matteo Danieli, Luca Ferrari, Francesco Patarnello, and Luca Querella. The IPO made them billionaires, at least on paper, while maintaining control of the company with more than 80% of the voting rights.

Some of their decisions will affect workers. According to the company, “although we have added 1,830 full-time team members through our acquisitions of AOL, Eventbrite, and Vimeo, we have already “parted” with many of them and will continue to do so. “Once the transformation of our three businesses is substantially complete in late 2026, we expect to have just a few hundred remaining.”

This cut in staff probably won’t affect the number of “Spooners.” The term Bending Spoons is reserved for only a select few core team members who have gone through a very selective recruitment process. There are currently about 620 of them, but that number has not grown quickly. In 2025, only 286 out of approximately 800,000 job applicants were hired.

Although core staff numbers have not increased significantly, productivity has increased. “Driven in part by advances in AI, Spooner’s revenue per full-time employee increased from $1.12 million in 2023 to $2.57 million in 2025, and hit $970,000 in the first quarter of 2026,” the company said. This has helped us move away from SaaS and we now hope to reap the benefits.

“As many businesses struggle to adapt, this may improve the ability of acquired businesses to expand their bottom lines,” Bending Spoons said. Additionally, “an environment of increasing uncertainty may present opportunities for us to acquire businesses at more favorable valuations.”

Despite what it sees as a favorable moment, Bending Spoons remains selective in its acquisitions while maintaining a broad scope. We self-reported more than 2,500 acquisition opportunities in 2025, performed in-depth analysis on approximately 200 of them, and completed six acquisitions. More will surely follow. This is the playbook.

“We have identified more than 1,000 digital companies (both private and public) that could be attractive acquisition targets in the future, with combined projected revenues of approximately $400 billion in 2025,” Ferrari said in a letter on behalf of the Bending Spoons team.

The playbook hasn’t changed, but the hint about going private serves as a reminder that the company has gone from paying “$10,000 for its first acquisition” to now “pursuing multibillion-dollar acquisitions.”

What follows may be even more intense. “AI will allow acquisition and transformation models to become more scalable by enabling them to do more with less people,” Ferrari predicted.

This story was originally published in October 2025 and is updated regularly with new information.