What is spoon bending? Everything you need to know about the AOL buyer

The 4 co-founders of Bending Spoons joined the ranks of billionaires this week.

CEO Luca Ferrari’s shares in Technology conglomerate based in Milan is now reportedly price $1.4 billion, and co-founders Matteo Danieli, Luca Querella and Francesco Patarnello own shares price $1.3 billion, according to Forbes estimates based on shareholder data published by the Italian business register.

The valuations follow Bending Spoons’ latest round of financing: $270 million from investors including T. Rowe Price and prior investors Baillie Gifford, Cox Enterprises, Durable Capital Partners and Fidelity, in addition to a $440 million secondary stock sale by existing shareholders. It is unclear whether any of the co-founders sold shares in a secondary transaction. Bending Spoons declined to comment on its co-founders’ rates.

Despite its catchy name, Bending Spoons remained in the shadows. The 12-year-old company often only makes headlines when it adds one other recognizable brand to its growing portfolio – most recently last week when it agreed to acquire AOL. for an undisclosed amount.

However, Bending Spoons is not a traditional private equity firm or a purely financial investment vehicle. It focuses on acquiring unprofitable but popular technology brands and then transforming them to serve tens of millions of users more effectively.

An organization often makes news when it restructures acquired corporations, often through significant layoffs, or makes controversial changes to beloved products – or each in the case of Evernote and WeTransfer.

Yet Bending Spoons itself stays largely unknown, regardless that its product offering has served over a billion people, with over 300 million monthly energetic users and 10 million paying customers. Here’s what you need to know about the company that is transforming some of the most recognizable brands on the web.

What is spoon bending?

Bending Spoons describes itself as a company that acquires and transforms digital businesses. Having grown to employ 400 to 500 “Spooners,” the company’s primary focus is on improving products and services created by others.

But it didn’t start out that way – the founders of Bending Spoons began building their very own apps and products before eventually changing course.

The little-known story is that Bending Spoons was born from the stays of Evertale, a Copenhagen startup that attended Startup Alley Disrupt SF 2011 and raised seed funding for its photo-sharing app Wink.

Shortly thereafter, Evertale went bankrupt and its investors left the company, but its founders and a few employees continued to work together, initially on their very own applications. The team soon made its first acquisition, and many others followed, CEO and co-founder Luca Ferrari said on the 20VC podcast in a rare interview.

In 2020, Bending Spoons made an exception by creating and donating Immuni, Italy’s official COVID-19 contact tracing app. But beyond that, he was mainly refining the formula: Bending Spoons identifies a popular product that it thinks it will possibly improve inside and out, and buys it from owners who have already hit their limit.

Following the acquisition, Bending Spoons is not a passive owner, making changes to the product experience and features, but also to the underlying technology; monetization strategy, including pricing; and organization of the team, including the variety of staff.

While its focus on efficiency and revenue overlaps with private equity strategies, Bending Spoons says it has a key difference: “it aims to hold the company forever and has never sold the acquired company.” He’s building a live portfolio, not collecting web relics or presiding over a tech graveyard.

To be clear, Bending Spoons’ acquisition targets so far have not necessarily been failing corporations – many of them still had significant user bases and significant revenues. However, they sometimes stagnated, were neglected or the owners wanted to leave. Let’s recap these key trades and what happened after them.

What corporations has Bending Spoons acquired?

While Bending Spoons acquired several corporations between 2014 and 2021, including AI photo enhancement company Remini, its most notable acquisitions have been more moderen.

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

In a deal also announced in 2022 and finalized in early 2023, Bending Spoons also acquired Evernote, a note-taking app that was reportedly valued at $1 billion before it ran into trouble. The acquisition was followed by layoffs, in addition to cuts to Evernote’s free offering.

The first half of the next yr 2024 was particularly energetic, when, among others, Meetup takeoverapplication creator Mosaics GroupAND Hopin’s StreamYard in the first half of the yr.

In July 2024, it acquired a publishing platform Issue and file transfer service WeTransfer, which later laid off staff and made changes to its free plan to introduce tighter limits. Later that yr, Bending Spoons announced it might spend $233 million in a private take-cash deal to acquire video platform Brightcove.

The pace of acquisitions will proceed in 2025, with acquisitions including: Komoot outdoor route planner and management software developer Set.

Bending Spoons also announced its intention to acquire Vimeo in a $1.38 billion all-cash deal and most recently acquired AOL from Yahoo. (Disclosure: Both AOL and Yahoo are former owners of TechCrunch, in which Yahoo has a small stake.)

According to Bending Spoons, the acquisitions of AOL and Vimeo are expected to close by the end of the yr, subject to standard closing conditions and regulatory approvals, including, in the case of Vimeo, shareholder approval.

How much are bending spoons price?

As of the end of October 2025, Bending Spoons is one of the few European tech decacorns (corporations valued at over $10 billion). The startup last raised a valuation of $2.8 billion in 2024, which implies its latest round represents a significant step forward.

Although Bending Spoons has been operating for a very long time, it had previously obtained equity financing several timesincluding in September 2022 and early 2024. It also has VIPs on its roster, including tennis and entertainment stars Andre Agassi and Bradley Cooper; technology industry greats Eric Schmidt, Mike Krieger and Xavier Niel; and performers The Weeknd, The Chainsmokers and Maluma.

According to Bending Spoons, the recent financing will support future acquisitions and investments in proprietary technology and artificial intelligence capabilities. This is in addition to the $2.8 billion in debt financing the company disclosed when it announced its intention to acquire AOL, debt that can finance the AOL transaction and future acquisitions.

What’s next?

Bending Spoons says it intends to pursue recent acquisitions that can expand its portfolio of consumer and enterprise digital products, and it now has the financial resources to pursue more significant goals in the future.

AOL and Vimeo already enjoy significantly more recognition than previous targets, even if the terms of the deal remain undisclosed. Properties also have some scope. In announcing the deal with AOL, Bending Spoons said AOL stays one of the 10 most used email providers in the world, with 8 million day by day energetic users and 30 million monthly energetic users. (Not long before the AOL acquisition, Bending Spoons was also roach look creator of the Elysium application and Typeform, a Barcelona-based SaaS company known for its form creation tools.)

Possibly to support its ongoing acquisition efforts, it is also offering job opportunities in a number of roles, with recent hires initially based at its headquarters in Milan, before being given the option to work from offices in London, Madrid and Warsaw, or work remotely.

In fact, despite warning candidates that Bending Spoons is a “challenging environment,” the company said it has already received greater than 600,000 applications for the 2025 job, a number that can likely increase as recent openings generate additional interest.