Hustler Words – Milan-based tech powerhouse Bending Spoons recently made a dramatic entrance onto the Nasdaq, briefly catapulting its market capitalization past an astounding $25 billion. This public debut, marked by a significant "pop," signals robust investor confidence in a company that has quietly amassed an impressive portfolio of digital staples, including household names like AOL and Vimeo. Despite a slight post-IPO adjustment, its valuation remains double its private $11 billion, underscoring the market’s appetite for its distinctive acquisition and optimization strategy.
Bending Spoons’ operational model, while reminiscent of private equity, distinguishes itself by its commitment to long-term ownership rather than divestment. The company’s core focus is to enhance the financial viability of its acquired assets, leveraging advanced technology and artificial intelligence. This often involves strategic adjustments, including price revisions and, controversially, workforce reductions. Co-founder and chief product officer Matteo Danieli, in a conversation with hustlerwords.com, acknowledged the scrutiny, particularly concerning beloved products like Evernote. However, he emphasized the "remarkably stable" customer retention rates despite these transformative changes.
Far from acquiring "dead companies," Bending Spoons targets platforms with established user bases and significant potential. Entrepreneur Joe Hyrkin, who sold his digital publishing platform Issuu to the Italian firm in 2024, articulated this perspective on LinkedIn post-IPO. He asserted that the company integrates these products into a sophisticated, centralized system encompassing product development, engineering, data analytics, monetization, AI, and operational discipline. This systematic approach appears highly effective, as evidenced by Bending Spoons’ reported $1.31 billion in revenue for 2025, with its current market cap suggesting even greater future expectations. The company’s user base has expanded dramatically over its 13-year history, serving over 500 million monthly active users and more than 9 million paying customers by March 2026.
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The origins of Bending Spoons trace back to the remnants of Evertale, a Copenhagen startup whose photo-sharing app, Wink, failed after a brief run. Undeterred, the founders and a small team pivoted to developing in-house applications before making their inaugural acquisition. CEO and co-founder Luca Ferrari, in a rare interview with the 20VC podcast, revealed this iterative beginning. An exception to their acquisition-focused strategy was the creation and donation of Immuni, Italy’s official COVID-19 contact-tracing app, in 2020. Otherwise, their formula has been consistent: identify popular products ripe for internal and external improvement, then acquire them from owners who have reached their operational limits.
Initially bootstrapped, Bending Spoons eventually secured significant equity financing, including rounds in 2022, 2024, and 2025. Its pre-IPO investor roster boasts an impressive mix of tech titans like Eric Schmidt, Mike Krieger, and Xavier Niel, alongside celebrities such as Andre Agassi, Bradley Cooper, Maluma, The Weeknd, and The Chainsmokers.
Upon acquisition, Bending Spoons adopts an intensely hands-on approach. This involves comprehensive overhauls of user experience, feature sets, underlying technology, monetization strategies (including pricing), and organizational structures, often leading to significant headcount adjustments. While this pursuit of efficiency and revenue generation mirrors private equity tactics, Bending Spoons’ unwavering commitment to "hold forever" and its record of never selling an acquired business sets it apart. It aims to cultivate a vibrant, expanding portfolio, not merely manage a tech graveyard.
The company’s acquisition spree has intensified in recent years. After earlier purchases like the AI-powered photo enhancer Remini, Bending Spoons made headlines with several high-profile deals. In 2022, it acquired Filmic, subsequently laying off its entire staff by December 2023. The same year saw the acquisition of Evernote, the once-$1 billion note-taking app, which also experienced layoffs and cuts to its free offerings. 2024 was particularly active, with the additions of Meetup, Mosaic Group, Hopin’s StreamYard, publishing platform Issuu, and file transfer service WeTransfer. The latter saw staff reductions and stricter limits on its free plan, drawing criticism from co-founder Nalden in December 2025. November 2024 brought a $233 million all-cash deal for video platform Brightcove. The momentum continued into early 2025 with route planner Komoot and management software maker Harvest. The company also announced intentions to acquire Vimeo for $1.38 billion and AOL from Yahoo for an undisclosed sum. By December 2025, Eventbrite was added to the fold for approximately $500 million, a stark contrast to its $1.76 billion IPO valuation in 2018. The Vimeo deal concluded in late 2025, resulting in extensive layoffs, including the entire video team. AOL, Eventbrite, and Tractive acquisitions were also finalized this year.
Looking ahead, the four co-founders – Matteo Danieli, Luca Ferrari, Francesco Patarnello, and Luca Querella – maintain firm control, holding over 80% of the voting power, making them billionaires, at least on paper. Their strategy continues to impact workforces significantly. While 1,830 full-time equivalent team members were added through the AOL, Eventbrite, and Vimeo acquisitions, many have already been "parted ways" with, and only a few hundred are expected to remain by late 2026. This reduction primarily affects acquired staff, not the "Spooners," Bending Spoons’ highly selective core team members, currently numbering around 620. Despite modest growth in core headcount, productivity has surged, with revenue per full-time equivalent Spooner increasing from $1.12 million in 2023 to $2.57 million in 2025, partly attributed to advancements in AI.
Bending Spoons anticipates a favorable environment for future growth, noting that "as many businesses struggle to adapt, our ability to expand the earnings of an acquired business may improve." Furthermore, "an environment of greater uncertainty could provide opportunities for us to acquire businesses at more favorable valuations." Despite this outlook, the company remains highly selective, sourcing over 2,500 acquisition opportunities in 2025, conducting in-depth analyses on approximately 200, and completing six.
Ferrari, in a letter on behalf of the Bending Spoons team, revealed an ambitious pipeline: "We’ve identified more than 1,000 digital businesses (both private and public) that could be attractive acquisition targets in the future, representing nearly $400 billion in aggregate estimated revenue in 2025." The company has evolved from its "first acquisition for $10,000" to now "pursuing acquisitions in the billions of dollars." With AI poised to enable greater output with fewer personnel, Ferrari predicts an even more scalable acquisition and transformation model, signaling an intensified period of growth and market consolidation for this formidable digital empire.
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