Bending Spoons' IPO Success
Bending Spoons, AOL Owner, Debuts on Wall Street with $1.7 Billion IPO and 41% Surge
Bending Spoons, the Milan-based owner of AOL, Vimeo, and Eventbrite, raised $1.7 billion in its Wall Street debut on Tuesday — and investors went wild. The stock surged 41% shortly after the opening bell, pushing the company's market value to $25.5 billion, according to Newsday.
The company priced 58 million shares at $29 each — above its initial $26–$28 target range. About $700 million went to the company itself. The remaining $1 billion went to selling shareholders. Shares now trade on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol "BSP," AP reported.
From $40,000 Startup to $25 Billion Empire
Bending Spoons was founded in 2013 in Copenhagen with just $40,000 left over from a failed startup. The company later moved to Milan. It spent years building mobile apps before pivoting to an aggressive "buy-and-revitalize" strategy — snapping up struggling tech brands and rebuilding them.
The acquisitions came fast. Bending Spoons bought Evernote in late 2022, then WeTransfer in 2024. It acquired video platform Vimeo for $1.38 billion in September 2025. It then bought AOL from Yahoo for roughly $1.45 billion to $1.5 billion in October 2025, backed by a $2.8 billion debt package. Eventbrite followed in December 2025 for about $500 million. The company now serves 500 million monthly active users across 50-plus businesses.
Revenue Doubled, Losses Flipped to Profit
Bending Spoons has turned its finances around quickly. Full-year 2025 revenue hit $1.31 billion, up from $671 million in 2024. In Q1 2026 alone, revenue reached $601 million — a 132% jump from the same period a year earlier.
The company also swung from a $112 million net loss in Q1 2025 to a $27.5 million profit in Q1 2026. CEO Luca Ferrari said AOL is "an iconic, beloved business" and that Bending Spoons intends to "invest significantly to help the product and the business flourish." The company has identified over 1,000 potential acquisition targets representing $400 billion in annual revenue.
The SpaceX Halo Effect Lights Up the IPO Market
The timing of the Bending Spoons IPO was no accident. SpaceX completed a record-setting $75 billion IPO on June 12, 2026, valuing the rocket company at over $2 trillion. That debut revived investor appetite for big tech listings that had been mostly quiet for software firms.
Matt Kennedy, senior strategist at Renaissance Capital, said the Bending Spoons debut is "a data point for the software industry" — but cautioned that the company's profile is "very different" from traditional software firms, given its heavy reliance on acquisitions rather than organic growth. The IPO was underwritten by Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, and Allen & Company, with investors including Baillie Gifford, T. Rowe Price, and actor Ryan Reynolds.
Critics Call the Model Asset-Stripping in Disguise
Not everyone is cheering. Bending Spoons has a pattern of deep job cuts after each deal. It reportedly laid off 75% of WeTransfer's staff and nearly the entire workforce at Vimeo, including whole engineering teams. Critics on tech forums describe the company as a "software locust" that fires creators, raises prices, and leaves products in maintenance mode.
Supporters see it differently. Analyst Roger Entner of Recon Analytics noted that running dozens of brands under one roof means "you only need one CFO," which drives massive profit margins. Scott Galloway, host of Prof G Markets, called Bending Spoons "the Berkshire Hathaway of forgotten but beloved brands." The company operates as a foreign private issuer, which means it faces fewer SEC disclosure requirements than U.S. domestic firms.
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