From Startup Failure to Billion-Dollar Success
Bending Spoons, a Milan-based tech conglomerate, has emerged as one of Europe’s most intriguing yet understated success stories. In late October 2025, its four cofounders officially joined the billionaire ranks, with CEO Luca Ferrari’s stake valued at $1.4 billion and the other three cofounders each holding stakes worth $1.3 billion.
The company’s journey to a $10+ billion valuation is particularly remarkable given its origins. Bending Spoons was born from the remains of Evertale, a failed Copenhagen startup that showcased its photo-sharing app at Disrupt SF 2011. When Evertale collapsed, the founders and a few employees regrouped and pivoted to a radically different strategy: acquiring and transforming existing digital products rather than building new ones from scratch.
A Unique Acquisition Strategy
Bending Spoons has developed a distinctive formula for identifying and transforming popular but underperforming tech brands. The company targets products with substantial user bases that have become stagnant, neglected, or whose owners are looking to exit.
Post-acquisition, Bending Spoons implements comprehensive changes across multiple dimensions: user experience and features, underlying technology, monetization strategies including pricing adjustments, and organizational restructuring—often involving significant layoffs. While this efficiency-focused approach resembles private equity tactics, the company emphasizes a crucial difference: it aims to hold acquisitions forever and has never sold an acquired business.
Notable Acquisitions and Controversies
The company’s acquisition spree has accelerated in recent years, with several high-profile deals:
- Evernote (2023): The once-billion-dollar note-taking app, followed by layoffs and cuts to free features
- Filmic (2022): Video editing apps, entire staff laid off in December 2023
- WeTransfer (2024): File transfer service, with subsequent staff cuts and stricter free plan limits
- Brightcove (2024): $233 million all-cash deal for the video platform
- Vimeo (2025): $1.38 billion all-cash acquisition announced
- AOL (2025): Latest acquisition from Yahoo, terms undisclosed
These deals have often sparked controversy due to substantial workforce reductions and changes to beloved products, though Bending Spoons maintains it’s building a sustainable portfolio rather than collecting digital relics.
Impressive Scale and Reach
Despite flying under the radar, Bending Spoons’ impact is substantial:
- Over 1 billion people served across its product portfolio
- 300+ million monthly active users
- 10 million paying customers
- 400-500 employees (“Spooners”)
The company’s cap table features notable names including Andre Agassi, Bradley Cooper, Eric Schmidt, Instagram cofounder Mike Krieger, and musicians The Weeknd and The Chainsmokers.
Funding for Future Growth
Beyond its recent $270 million equity round that pushed its valuation past $10 billion, Bending Spoons has secured $2.8 billion in debt financing to fund the AOL acquisition and future deals. This war chest positions the company to pursue increasingly prominent targets.
The acquisition of AOL—still one of the world’s top 10 email providers with 8 million daily active users and 30 million monthly active users—signals Bending Spoons’ growing ambitions and capacity to acquire household names.
What’s Next
Bending Spoons shows no signs of slowing down. The company continues to recruit talent across its Milan headquarters and offices in London, Madrid, and Warsaw, having received over 600,000 job applications in 2025 alone—a number likely to grow as its recent deals generate additional attention.
As it continues transforming some of the internet’s most recognizable brands with its efficiency-driven approach, Bending Spoons remains a fascinating case study in how to build a tech conglomerate through strategic acquisitions rather than organic product development. Whether its controversial methods will prove sustainable long-term remains to be seen, but for now, this Italian company has quietly positioned itself as a major force in European tech.
With its unique “acquire and transform” model, Bending Spoons is rewriting the playbook on how to build a tech empire—one controversial acquisition at a time.
