Article · Wikipedia archive · Last revised Jul 24, 2026

Bending Spoons

Bending Spoons S.p.A. is an Italian technology conglomerate founded in 2013. The company has acquired over 50 older tech companies including Vimeo, Evernote, AOL, EventBrite, Meetup and Issuu, laying off staff and increasing user fees. Based in Milan, the company typically acquires products with existing product‑market fit and manages them for long-term ownership, by increasing revenue and reducing expenses. Its acquisitions usually lead to significant or total layoffs with the company employing its own full-stack developers to rewrite acquired codebases using artificial intelligence tools and open-source software. On July 1, 2026, the company became a public company via an initial public offering on the American stock market.

Last revised
Jul 24, 2026
Read time
≈ 11 min
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2,613 w
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Source
Wikipedia ↗
Bending Spoons S.p.A.
TypePublic
Nasdaq: BSP
IndustrySoftware as a service
Founded2013 (2013) in Copenhagen, Denmark
Founders
  • Luca Ferrari
  • Francesco Patarnello
  • Matteo Danieli
  • Luca Querella
  • Tomasz Greber
Headquarters
Milan
,
Italy
Products
Revenue
  • Increase US$1.31 billion (2025)
  • US$671 million (2024)
  • Increase US$278 million (2025)
  • US$127 million (2024)
  • Decrease US$−0.2 million (2025)
  • US$89 million (2024)
Number of employees
  • Increase 1,743 (2025)
  • 712 (2024)
Websitebendingspoons.com
Footnotes
123

Bending Spoons S.p.A. is an Italian technology conglomerate founded in 2013. The company has acquired over 50 older tech companies including Vimeo, Evernote, AOL, EventBrite, Meetup and Issuu, laying off staff and increasing user fees.4 Based in Milan, the company typically acquires products with existing product‑market fit5 and manages them for long-term ownership, by increasing revenue and reducing expenses.67 Its acquisitions usually lead to significant or total layoffs with the company employing its own full-stack developers to rewrite acquired codebases using artificial intelligence tools and open-source software (often Python, FastAPI, and TypeScript).89 On July 1, 2026, the company became a public company via an initial public offering on the American stock market.

History

Luca Ferrari, Francesco Patarnello, and Matteo Danieli, worked on an unsuccessful venture-funded product startup called Evertale. They were left with $40,000, which became the seed capital for Bending Spoons in June 2013, also founded in Copenhagen.101112 The company name was inspired by a scene from the science fiction movie The Matrix.1013 The company moved to Milan in 2014.12

On 17 April 2020, the Italian government released a statement on its website announcing that Bending Spoons had been selected to design and develop Italy's official COVID-19 contact tracing app, Immuni.1415 The app was released on 1 June 2020.16 Immuni was later decommissioned on December 31, 2022.17

In April 2026, it was revealed that Bending Spoons had picked banks to organize a potential $20 billion U.S. initial public offering in 2026.18 On June 8, the company filed a Form F-1 with the SEC to list on Nasdaq's Global Select Market under the ticker symbol BSP, targeting a valuation of approximately $20 billion and seeking to raise $1.5 billion.119 The filing disclosed revenue of $1.31 billion for full-year 2025 and $601 million for the first quarter of 2026, compared with $259 million in the same period a year earlier.20 Bending Spoons shares opened for trading on July 1. The company raised $1.68 billion, pricing shares at $29.00. During its first day of trading, the stock surged nearly 40% to close at $40.50 per share.21 The listing follows a growth strategy focused on acquiring and restructuring over 50 legacy digital brands, including AOL, Evernote and WeTransfer.22

Acquisitions

Bending Spoons' earliest acquisitions include video editing application Splice, which it acquired from GoPro in 201823, and AI-powered photo editing platform Remini in 202124.

In September 2022, Bending Spoons acquired FiLMiC25 and converted its video-recording app FiLMiC Pro to a subscription revenue model.26 In December 2023, the original FiLMiC team were laid off, and development of FiLMiC Pro was continued in-house by Bending Spoons.27

In November 2022, Bending Spoons agreed to acquire Evernote.28 The acquisition was concluded in January 2023.29 In July 2023, Evernote laid off all of its existing staff and announced it would relocate to Europe to be closer to Bending Spoons' headquarters.30 Also in 2023, the company acquired Alight Creative, creators of video editing software Alight Motion.31

Bending Spoons made a series of acquisitions in 2024. In January, it acquired the assets of New York City-based mobile app developer Mosaic Group from IAC Inc.; subsequently, Mosaic's entire workforce of 330 staff members was laid off, as they were not part of the acquisition.3233 Also that month, Bending Spoons acquired Meetup, a social media platform for organizing in-person and virtual activities.3435 In April, the company announced that it would acquire Hopin, owner of the popular live streaming studio StreamYard.36 Later in July, the company announced it had acquired digital publishing platform Issuu.37 Also in July, the company agreed to acquire the Dutch file transfer service WeTransfer, then announced in September they were laying off 75% of the company's workforce.3839 In November, the company agreed to acquire video platform company Brightcove for $233 million.40 In March, Brightcove laid off 33% of employees.41

In 2025, Bending Spoons acquired several companies, including Komoot in March for near €300 million, soon after which it laid off three quarters of the staff.4243 The company also acquired professional services software provider Harvest in June, California-based MileIQ for $233 million in July,44 video sharing platform Vimeo in September for $1.38 billion, and AOL in October for $1.5 billion.4546 In December, the acquisition of Eventbrite for approximately $500 million was announced, which closed on March 10, 2026.4748 The following month, Vimeo laid off most of their staff, including the entire video team.49 AOL later laid off more than 100 employees in February 2026.50 In April, Bending Spoons expanded its portfolio into the IoT and pet-tech sector by acquiring Tractive, an Austrian company specialized in GPS tracking and health monitoring for pets. The acquisition closed in May 2026.5152

Acquisition history

Date Company Products Purpose Country Value (USD) References
2018 Vemory Inc./Path 36 LLCnote 1 Splice App Mobile video editing  United States — 535455
June 2021 BigWinePot Inc. Remini Mobile photo editing  China — 56
September 2, 2022 FiLMiC Inc. Filmic Pro Mobile video capture and editing  United States — 25
DoubleTake
Filmic Firstlight Mobile photo capture and editing
November 16, 2022 Evernote Corporation Evernote Note-taking and task-management  United States 200,000,000 29
2023 Alight Creative Inc. Alight Motion Mobile video motion design  Republic of Korea —
May 30, 2023 Humamy S.r.l. Vegetarian meal home delivery  Italy — 57
January 10, 2024 Mosaic Group/Apalonnote 2 Clime Weather forecasting  United States 100,000,000 32
iTranslate Translation, language learning
Robokiller Spam call filtering
January 11, 2024 Meetup Social networking  United States — 34
April 9, 2024 Hopin StreamYard Live streaming studio  United Kingdom — 58
July 19, 2024 Issuu Electronic publishing  Denmark — 37
July 31, 2024 WeTransfer File transferring  Netherlands — 38
January 10, 2025 Loomly Social media management  United States — 59
February 4, 2025 Brightcove Video hosting  United States 223,000,000 40
March 20, 2025 Komoot Navigation  Germany — 42
June 10, 2025 Iridesco LLC Harvest Time tracking software  United States —
July 8, 2025 MileIQ Mileage tracking  United States 223,000,000 60
September 10, 2025 Vimeo Video hosting  United States 1,380,000,000 46
October 29, 2025 AOLnote 3 Email services  United States 1,400,000,000 61
March 10, 2026 Eventbrite Ticket marketplace  United States 500,000,000 48
May 18, 2026 Tractive Pet monitoring  Austria 900,000,000 52

Notes

  1. Acquired from GoPro
  2. Acquired from IAC/InterActiveCorp
  3. Acquired from Yahoo Inc.

Playond

Logo of the defunct Playond mobile gaming subscription service. source ↗

In 2019, Bending Spoons launched a mobile gaming subscription titled Playond. The service provided subscribers access to a catalog of premium iOS games, competing with similar platforms like Apple Arcade or GameClub.62 Some criticised the service for re-releasing games which previously used a one-off payment model under a subscription, sometimes resetting user progress or locking the user out of games they had previously bought after the licensing rights had been moved to Bending Spoons.63 Notable titles at launch included Crashlands, Morphite, Sleep Attack, Daggerhood, and Jydge. All games also allowed for limited free play with an 'energy' system, to entice new users to subscribe.6465

In March 2020, Bending Spoons announced the closure of the Playond service with the titles in their library being returned to the App Store pages of their original developers. As a result of the closure, many games briefly became free-to-play as a result of their servers being shut down.66

See also

See also

References

References

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  2. Zargani, Luisa (9 December 2021). "Renzo Rosso's Red Circle Investments Takes Stake in Bending Spoons". Women's Wear Daily.
  3. Prescott, Katie (30 November 2025). "Luca Ferrari: Europe needs to smash the language barrier". The Times. Retrieved 4 December 2025.
  4. Griffith, Erin. "The Company Reviving AOL, Vimeo and Other Internet Oldies Amid the A.I. Boom". NY Times.
  5. "Hundreds of millions in revenue and three acquisitions in 2024 — what's behind Bending Spoons' success?". Sifted. Retrieved 27 July 2025.
  6. Foley, John (25 June 2025). "Bending Spoons tries out an odd kind of financial magic trick". Financial Times. Retrieved 26 June 2026.
  7. Mehta, Ivan (8 September 2024). "Bending Spoons plans to lay off 75% of WeTransfer staff after acquisition". TechCrunch. Retrieved 27 July 2025.
  8. Gustafson, CJ (11 June 2026). "Bending Spoons IPO: S1 Breakdown". Mostly Metrics. Retrieved 1 July 2026.
  9. Orosz, Gergely (23 July 2025). "Twisting the rules of building software: Bending Spoons (the team behind Evernote)". newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com. Retrieved 27 July 2025.
  10. Novarini, Matteo (17 February 2025). "Matrix, la prima startup andata male e l'unicorno italiano: a tu per tu con Luca Ferrari, ad di Bending Spoons". Forbes Italia (in Italian). Retrieved 9 October 2025.
  11. O'Brien, Amy (11 April 2024). "Hundreds of millions in revenue and three acquisitions in 2024 — what's behind Bending Spoons' success?". Sifted. Retrieved 9 October 2025.
  12. Rocco, Gabriella (27 January 2024). "La startup milanese Bending Spoons chiude un round da 200 milioni e compra un'azienda americana". la Repubblica (in Italian). Retrieved 9 October 2025.
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  26. Voss, Olaf von (8 September 2022). "FiLMiC Pro Acquired by Bending Spoons – New Subscription Model". CineD. Retrieved 12 January 2024.
  27. Davis, Wes (3 December 2023). "Bending Spoons confirmed it laid off all 22 of Filmic's original staff". The Verge. Retrieved 12 January 2024.
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  29. "Evernote has been acquired — here's how its new owner can fix it". TheNextWeb. 6 January 2023. Retrieved 24 April 2023.
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  34. Roth, Emma (11 January 2024). "Meetup got acquired by Bending Spoons". The Verge. Retrieved 12 January 2024.
  35. Ferrari, Luca (8 January 2024). "A New Home for Meetup". Meetup Blog. Retrieved 12 January 2024.
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  40. Chesto, Jon (25 November 2024). "Video company Brightcove sold for $233 million to Italian app developer". Boston Globe. Retrieved 26 November 2024.
  41. Priestley, Jenny. "Brightcove announces layoffs following acquisition by Bending Spoons". TVB Europe. Retrieved 21 January 2026.
  42. "Bending Spoons Acquires komoot". BusinessWire. Retrieved 20 March 2025.
  43. Ksienrzyk, Lisa (8 May 2025). "Komoot: Was hinter dem Verkauf steckt". WirtschaftsWoche.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: deprecated archival service (link)
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  47. Temkin, Marina (2 December 2025). "Bending Spoons agrees to buy Eventbrite for $500M to revive stalled brand". TechCrunch. Retrieved 4 December 2025.
  48. IQ, S&P Capital (10 March 2026). "Bending Spoons US Inc. completed the acquisition of Eventbrite, Inc. (NYSE:EB)". MarketScreener. Retrieved 10 March 2026.
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  50. JoJack, Beth (20 February 2026). "AOL to lay off 108 tied to Reston office". Virginia Business. Retrieved 21 February 2026.
  51. bebeez (31 March 2026). "Bending Spoons si compra Tractive, la scaleup austriaca leader nel tracciamento della posizione degli animali domestici". BeBeez (in Italian). Retrieved 30 April 2026.
  52. Ben-Hutta, Gabriella (18 May 2026). "Bending Spoons closes acquisition of Tractive". Coverager - Insurance news and insights. Retrieved 21 May 2026.
  53. Cargnelutti, Federico (8 July 2025). "Freemium done right: the Splice story". Substack.
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  56. "Research Update: Bending Spoons 'B+' Rating Affirmed On Vimeo Acquisition Despite Elevated Leverage; Outlook Stable". S&P Global Ratings. 26 September 2025.
  57. Deugeni, Andrea (30 March 2023). "Bending Spoons entra nel food vegetariano e prende il controllo di Humamy". Milano Finanza (in Italian).
  58. "Bending Spoons to Acquire StreamYard, Leader in Live-Streaming and Video-Recording Solutions". Business Wire. 9 April 2024.
  59. "Willkie Advises Bending Spoons on Acquisition of Loomly". Willkie Farr & Gallagher. 10 January 2025.
  60. "Willkie Advises Bending Spoons on Acquisition of MileIQ". Willkie Farr & Gallagher. 8 July 2025.
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  62. Frater, Luke (21 November 2019). "Playond is the indie alternative to Apple Arcade in the quest to fix mobile gaming". www.pocketgamer.com. Retrieved 2 July 2026.
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External links