Bending Spoons debuts at $18B valuation, using AI to transform AOL and legacy internet brands

Bending Spoons IPO marks major milestone for Italian tech operator

Bending Spoons went public on the Nasdaq today, opening at an over $18 billion valuation before shares jumped 40% by market close1

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. The 13-year-old Milan-based company raised approximately $1 billion through the offering, pricing shares at $29 and trading under the ticker symbol BSP2

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. Headquartered in Milan, the firm has quietly built a portfolio of more than 50 businesses since 2013, including iconic internet properties that once dominated their categories but have since lost momentum3

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The Bending Spoons IPO represents a significant validation for a company that operates like digital private equity, acquiring struggling or nascent digital properties and revamping them with what co-founder and CEO Luca Ferrari describes as "deep product, tech, and monetization work"2

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. The company's portfolio includes AOL, which it acquired for $1.5 billion in January as its largest deal to date, alongside Vimeo, Evernote, WeTransfer, Eventbrite, Meetup, and StreamYard2

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AI-driven growth accelerates revenue and productivity metrics

The role of AI in business operations has become central to Bending Spoons' strategy and investor pitch. The company reported that the share of code written by or with the help of AI increased to more than 90% in the first quarter of 2026 from less than 10% a year prior2

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. This dramatic shift has driven remarkable productivity gains, with revenue per employee growth climbing from $1.12 million in 2023 to $2.57 million in 2025, reaching an annual run rate of $4 million in the first quarter of 20261

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"In the past year and a half, we've witnessed an incredible acceleration in the pace at which we were able to ship new features and create value for users," co-founder and chief product officer Matteo Danieli told TechCrunch1

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. The company's F-1 filing includes a chapter titled 'AI before it was cool,' referencing its roots in Evertale, an early AI-powered diary app that predated Bending Spoons1

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Software brand acquisitions drive explosive revenue expansion

Bending Spoons reported revenue of $1.31 billion in 2025, up from $671 million in 2024 and $387 million in 2023, representing a compound annual growth rate of 84%3

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. First-quarter 2026 sales of $600 million put the company on track to exceed $2 billion for the year2

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. Adjusted operating income reached $613 million in 2025, representing a 47% margin, while adjusted net income climbed to $375.6 million3

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The company's approach to acquiring digital companies emerged from hard-earned lessons. Before Bending Spoons existed, founders Luca Ferrari, Matteo Danieli, and Francesco Patarnello ran Evertale, which raised a million dollars but failed to find customers3

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. "We'd observed phenomenal entrepreneurs fail in their ventures and less remarkable ones succeed," Ferrari explained in the shareholder letter, noting that "luck mattered a great deal at the early stages of a business"3

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. By 2013, they liquidated Evertale with $40,000 remaining and founded Bending Spoons with a focus on operational excellence rather than luck-dependent product-market fit.

Capital deployment strategy targets aging SaaS market leaders

With over $1 billion raised through the IPO, Bending Spoons has identified more than 1,000 acquisition candidates generating between $50 million and $5 billion in annual revenue each3

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. Roughly 791 of those targets are based in North America and 240 in Europe, together representing close to $400 billion in combined 2025 revenue3

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. The company targets internal rate of return of 65% on a levered basis and 25% unlevered for deals closed between 2023 and the first quarter of 20263

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"From a buyer's perspective and as a company that grows through acquisitions, that's actually a great opportunity and moment to deploy capital," Danieli said regarding slashed SaaS market valuations1

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. Unlike traditional private equity firms, Bending Spoons has never sold a business, positioning itself more as a long-term ownership operator. "If you want to try to do the type of transformations that we do -- where we literally rethink things from the ground up and we integrate them so deeply into our platform that every business we own works off the same technological operating system, the same core team -- you can't sell them," Ferrari told CNBC2

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The balance sheet reflects this aggressive buildout strategy, with total assets standing at nearly $7 billion as of March 31, 2026, against total liabilities of $5.9 billion, much of it acquisition-related debt3

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. The company leverages sophisticated data-driven decision-making in areas like pricing, using what Danieli describes as "the sophisticated data tracking, analytics infrastructure and experimentation toolkit that we've developed"1

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. While this approach has sometimes led to price increases that sparked complaints from long-term subscribers, customer retention has remained "remarkably stable," according to Danieli1

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