What is spoon bending? Everything to know about the AOL acquirer

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

The participation of general director Luca Ferrari in Milan-based technology conglomerate is now reportedly worth $1.4 billion, while co-founders Matteo Danieli, Luca Querella and Francesco Patarnello each have stakes worth $1.3 billion, according to Forbes estimates based on shareholder data published by the Italian Business Registry.

The valuations come on the heels of Bending Spoons’ latest funding round: $270 million from investors including T. Rowe Price and previous backers Baillie Gifford, Cox Enterprises, Durable Capital Partners and Fidelity, plus a $440 million secondary stock sale from existing shareholders. It is unclear whether any of the co-founders sold shares in the secondary transaction. Bending Spoons has declined to comment on its co-founders’ bets.

Despite its catchy name, Bending Spoons has stayed remarkably under the radar. The 12-year-old company typically makes headlines only when it adds another recognizable brand to its growing portfolio; the most recent, last week, when it agreed to acquire AOL. for an undisclosed amount.

But Bending Spoons is neither a traditional private equity firm nor a purely financial investment vehicle. Its goal is to acquire popular but underperforming technology brands, and then transform them to serve millions of users more efficiently.

The company tends to make headlines when it restructures these acquired companies, often through major layoffs, or makes controversial changes to beloved products, or both in the case of Evernote and WeTransfer.

Still, Bending Spoons remains largely unknown, even though its product roster has served over a billion people, with over 300 million monthly active users and 10 million paying customers. Here’s what you need to know about the company that’s reshaping some of the Internet’s most recognizable brands.

What is spoon bending?

Bending Spoons describes itself as a company that acquires and transforms digital businesses. Having grown to a staff of 400 to 500 Spooners, their primary goal is to make improvements to the products and services that others have created.

However, it didn’t start out that way: Bending Spoons’ founders had tried creating their own apps and products before finally changing their focus.

The little-known backstory is that Bending Spoons was born from the remains of Evertale, a Copenhagen-based startup that participated in Disrupt SF 2011’s Startup Alley and raised seed funding for its photo-sharing app, Wink.

Evertale failed soon after and investors got an exit, but its founders and a couple of employees continued to work together, initially on internal applications. Soon enough, the team made its first acquisition, followed by many others, CEO and co-founder Luca Ferrari told the 20VC podcast. in a rare interview.

In 2020, Bending Spoons made an exception when it created and donated Immuni, Italy’s official COVID-19 contact tracing app. But other than that, it’s mainly been perfecting a formula: Bending Spoons identifies a popular product it thinks it can improve inside and out, and buys it from homeowners who’ve reached their limits.

Post-acquisition, Bending Spoons is anything but a passive owner, making changes to the products’ user experience and features, but also to the underlying technology; monetization strategy, including pricing; and team organization, including staff.

While this focus on efficiency and revenue overlaps with private equity strategies, Bending Spoons claims a key difference: it “aims to be around forever and has never sold an acquired business.” It’s about building an active portfolio, not about collecting Internet relics or presiding over a technological graveyard.

To be clear, Bending Spoons’ acquisition targets so far haven’t necessarily been bankrupt companies: many still had substantial user bases and revenue. But they have tended to be stagnant, abandoned or with owners looking to exit. Let’s recap these key agreements and also what happened next.

What companies has Bending Spoons acquired?

While Bending Spoons acquired several companies between 2014 and 2021, including AI photo enhancer Remini, its most notable acquisitions came more recently.

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

In a deal also announced in 2022 and finalized in early 2023, Bending Spoons also acquired Evernote, the note-taking app that had reportedly reached a $1 billion valuation before running into trouble. The acquisition saw layoffs, as well as cuts to Evernote’s free offering.

The first half of the following year, 2024, was particularly active, with the Meetup acquisitionapp creator Mosaic Groupand Hopin’s StreamYard in the first half of the year.

In July 2024 it acquired the publishing platform. Affair and file transfer service WeTransfer, where it subsequently cut staff and made changes to its free plan, introducing stricter limits. Later in the year, Bending Spoons announced it would spend $233 million in a private cash deal to acquire video platform Brightcove.

Acquisitions have continued apace in 2025, with acquisitions including the Komoot Outdoor Route Planner and management software manufacturer Harvest.

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

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

How much do bending spoons cost?

As of late October 2025, Bending Spoons is one of Europe’s rare tech decacorns (companies valued at over $10 billion). The startup last raised a valuation of $2.8 billion in 2024, making its latest round a significant step forward.

Although it had been around for a long time, Bending Spoons had already raised equity financing several timesincluding in September 2022 and early 2024. It also has VIPs on its top table, including tennis and entertainment stars Andre Agassi and Bradley Cooper; tech industry greats Eric Schmidt, Mike Krieger and Xavier Niel; and the artists The Weeknd, The Chainsmokers and Maluma.

According to Bending Spoons, its new financing will support future acquisitions and investments in its 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 will finance the AOL deal and future acquisitions.

What’s next?

Bending Spoons says it intends to continue pursuing new acquisitions that expand its portfolio of consumer and enterprise digital products, and now has funds to take on bigger targets in the future.

AOL and Vimeo already have much more name 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 remains one of the top 10 most used email providers in the world, with 8 million daily active users and 30 million monthly active users. (Not long before acquiring AOL, Bending Spoons was also rumored be looking Elysium app builder and Typeform, the Barcelona-based SaaS company known for its form creation tools).

Presumably to support its ongoing efforts to acquire companies, it also has vacancies in a number of roles, with new hires initially working from its headquarters in Milan before having the option to work from offices in London, Madrid and Warsaw, or remotely.

In fact, despite warning candidates that Bending Spoons is a “demanding environment,” the company has said it has already received more than 600,000 job applications in 2025, a figure that will likely increase as its recent deals generate additional attention.