When Bending Spoons debuted on Nasdaq in July this year, it was an obscure Italian holding company owning established internet brands such as AOL, Vimeo, Eventbrite, and Evernote.
Less than four months later, the Milan-based company has become an unexpected destination for once-prominent software startups sidelined by the AI boom. This week, its acquisition plan received significant backing from one of the world’s most renowned holding companies, Berkshire Hathaway.
Bending Spoons has described Berkshire as a "long-term source of inspiration" for its strategy. Today, Berkshire has invested over $900 million in the company, including a $330 million stake disclosed on Wednesday. Wall Street reacted enthusiastically to the deal, pushing Bending Spoons' stock up 41%, though some of those gains were retraced later in the week, leaving the company with a market capitalization of approximately $30 billion.
In a report following the announcement, analysts at Mizuho, a U.S.-based investment bank, wrote: “Berkshire’s decision to increase its position just months after the IPO and at the current price further demonstrates that one of the world’s most respected long-term investors has placed its trust in the Bending Spoons model.”
Another major development from Bending Spoons this week highlights another side of this business: layoffs. In August, Bending Spoons announced its acquisition of workflow software provider Airtable for approximately $1.3 billion—a price nearly 90% lower than Airtable’s peak valuation at the end of 2021. On Monday, Bending Spoons stated that a “substantial portion” of Airtable’s pre-acquisition team would be leaving and receiving “substantial severance packages.” Previously, similar layoffs have been carried out at assets previously owned by Evernote, Vimeo, and WeTransfer.
For the tech industry, Bending Spoons’ move is the latest example of wealth rapidly shifting in the age of artificial intelligence. New intelligent agents powered by large language models are replacing software developers and the products they build. As Anthropic and OpenAI move toward trillion-dollar valuations, companies are entrusting them with more high-value work—at the expense of numerous software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies—a phenomenon known as the “SaaSpocalypse.”
The stock prices of Intuit, HubSpot, and Adobe have all fallen by at least 30% this year, while a long list of once-prominent private SaaS companies are now struggling to secure capital, and public markets show no interest in IPOs. Last month, Bending Spoons agreed to acquire collaboration software provider Miro for $1.36 billion; Miro was once valued at $17.5 billion.
“You’re either hot or you’re nothing,” says Ethan Kurzweil, seasoned software investor and founder and managing partner at Chemistry VC. Kurzweil, who also uses Airtable himself, notes that there are still many excellent SaaS products and solid teams in the market—but “they’re no longer at the forefront.”
Transitioning from an app developer to an acquirer
Bending Spoons was founded in 2013 by three friends—Luca Ferrari, Matteo Danieli, and Francesco Patarnello—with Ferrari currently serving as CEO. According to the prospectus, their initial mobile app, Evertale, did not succeed; they then used the remaining $40,000 to build an operating company rather than continue developing products nobody wanted.
Over the past few years, Bending Spoons has announced its largest acquisitions to date: Evernote in 2022, Brightcove in 2024, and Vimeo, AOL, and Eventbrite in 2025.
The company completed its IPO on June 30, raising approximately $1.7 billion at $29 per share, and began trading on Nasdaq the following day. The stock closed at $47.07 last Friday.
Before Bending Spoons recently made a major push into enterprise software, one of the primary acquirers in the space over the past decade was private equity giants Thoma Bravo and Vista Equity Partners. These firms sought to acquire SaaS companies they believed were undervalued, then improved efficiency, cut costs, and integrated acquisitions to transform them into assets that could be sold or taken public at a higher valuation.
Bending Spoons takes a different approach. Rather than seeking a final exit, the company aims to generate ongoing profits from its acquired businesses, following a Warren Buffett-style model. However, unlike Berkshire Hathaway, Bending Spoons focuses exclusively on technology and actively engages deeply in software, operations, and personnel decisions.
Nick Mehta, former CEO of cloud software provider Gainsight, said private equity firms are now constrained by “having been burned.”
“They paid a much higher price back then and hold so many troubled companies, so it’s now hard for them to act boldly,” said Mehta, who sold Gainsight to Vista in 2020.
Thoma Bravo and Vista did not respond to requests for interviews. Bending Spoons told CNBC in a statement that the company "hasn't been outbid on a target in several years."
As companies began to ramp up their SaaS efforts, Mehta said the verb “Bending Spooned” emerged in Silicon Valley to describe companies being acquired at extremely low prices.
“Unfortunately, many of my friends in that circle are stuck,” Mehta said. “Investors want to exit, but there are no buyers. Anything before ChatGPT is now considered legacy assets.”
Mizuho analyst Lloyd Walmsley said that Bending Spoons' model differs from traditional acquisition models.
“I think very few people can match the depth of operational involvement and willingness to make large-scale product changes that these individuals have demonstrated,” Walmsley said in the interview. “Traditional private equity firms typically don’t make changes anywhere near this extensive.”
For customers of companies acquired by Bending Spoons, sudden price increases often follow.
In April 2023, several months after acquiring Evernote, Bending Spoons increased the personal annual subscription price from $70 to $130. Later, the company adjusted its product offerings, charging $100 for the entry-level plan and $250 for "Evernote Advanced," whereas the previous professional plan had been priced at $170.
“My first thought was, ‘Oh no, I’ll probably have to switch to OneNote,’” said Walmsley, referring to Microsoft’s note-taking app. But he said he ultimately continued using Evernote.
“They’re really good at finding things that offer a lot of value and have high switching costs,” said Walmsley. “The price is not high relative to the switching costs.”
Ferrari said in a CNBC interview on Thursday that Bending Spoons will reinvest the profits from its companies into future growth, with the "vast majority" of that growth coming from doing more transactions.
“We can unlock some improvement opportunities in the early years, after which the business will grow according to the intrinsic growth potential of the market itself,” said Ferrari.
For Berkshire Hathaway and other Bending Spoons investors, this bet remains unproven.
As artificial intelligence squeezes profit margins across much of the software industry, these products must remain compelling enough to justify higher prices for customers. In its first post-IPO earnings report released in August, Bending Spoons reported that revenue more than doubled year-over-year to over $700 million, with growth driven almost entirely by acquisitions; net profit increased 171% to $177 million.
However, that was before the Airtable transaction was completed and before Miro made its announcement. Over the coming quarters and years, Wall Street will clearly see whether this structure can truly revitalize the software business.
During the August earnings call, an analyst asked whether Airtable signaled a long-term shift in M&A strategy toward enterprise software.
Ferrari stated that approximately half of Bending Spoons' revenue now comes from professional services, primarily through Brightcove and Vimeo, which also include enterprise offerings. He said the company’s recent focus on software is largely due to seeing value in these areas following significant sell-offs.
“Until recently, most enterprise SaaS businesses were valued at unreasonably high levels,” Ferrari said. “We never saw any logic in those prices.”
Ari Levy of CNBC contributed to this report.