This week, the four cofounders of Bending Spoons joined the billionaire ranks. According to Forbes estimates based on shareholder data from the Italian Business Register, CEO Luca Ferrari’s stake in the Milan-based tech conglomerate is now worth $1.4 billion. His cofounders, Matteo Danieli, Luca Querella, and Francesco Patarnello, each hold stakes valued at $1.3 billion.
These valuations follow Bending Spoons’ latest funding round, which included $270 million from investors like T. Rowe Price and earlier backers including Baillie Gifford, Cox Enterprises, Durable Capital Partners, and Fidelity. The company also facilitated a $440 million secondary share sale by existing shareholders. It is unclear if any of the cofounders sold stock in this secondary transaction. Bending Spoons has declined to comment on its cofounders’ stakes.
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, most recently when it agreed to acquire AOL for an undisclosed amount.
Bending Spoons is not a traditional private equity firm or a pure financial investment vehicle. Its focus is on acquiring underperforming but popular tech brands and then transforming them to serve millions of users more efficiently. The company often makes news when it restructures these acquired companies, frequently through significant layoffs, or makes controversial changes to beloved products, as seen with Evernote and WeTransfer.
Still, Bending Spoons itself remains largely unknown, even though its roster of products has served more than a billion people, with over 300 million monthly active users and 10 million paying customers.
Bending Spoons describes itself as a company that acquires and transforms digital businesses. Having grown to a headcount of 400 to 500 employees, its main focus is on making improvements to products and services that others have created. However, it did not start that way. The founders initially tried building their own apps and products before shifting their focus.
The company 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. After Evertale failed, its founders and a couple of employees continued working together on in-house apps. The team soon made its first acquisition, followed by many others.
In 2020, Bending Spoons made an exception to its acquisition model by creating and donating Immuni, Italy’s official COVID-19 contact tracing app. Other than that, it has honed a specific formula: it identifies a popular product it believes it can improve and buys it from owners who have reached their limits.
After an acquisition, Bending Spoons is an active owner, making changes to user experience, features, underlying technology, monetization strategy, pricing, and team organization, including headcount. While this focus on efficiency overlaps with private equity strategies, Bending Spoons claims a key difference: it aims to hold forever and has never sold an acquired business. Its acquisition targets are not necessarily failing businesses; many still had substantial user bases and revenue but were stagnant, neglected, or had owners looking to exit.
Bending Spoons acquired several companies between 2014 and 2021, including the AI photo enhancer Remini. Its most notable acquisitions happened more recently. In 2022, it acquired Filmic, known for its popular video and photo editing apps, and laid off the entire staff in December 2023.
Also in 2022, Bending Spoons acquired Evernote, the note-taking app that had reportedly reached a $1 billion valuation. Layoffs followed the acquisition, as well as cuts to Evernote’s free offering.
The first half of 2024 was particularly active, with the acquisitions of Meetup, app maker Mosaic Group, and Hopin’s StreamYard. In July 2024, it acquired the publishing platform Issuu and the file transfer service WeTransfer, where it later cut staff and made changes to its free plan, introducing stricter limits. Later in the year, Bending Spoons announced it would spend $233 million on an all-cash take-private deal to acquire the video platform Brightcove.
The acquisitions continued in 2025, including the outdoors route planner Komoot and management software maker Harvest. Bending Spoons also announced its intention to acquire Vimeo in a $1.38 billion all-cash deal and, more recently, to acquire AOL from Yahoo. The acquisitions of AOL and Vimeo are expected to close by the end of the year, subject to standard closing conditions and regulatory approvals.
As of the end of October 2025, Bending Spoons is one of Europe’s rare tech decacorns, valued at more than $10 billion. The company last raised funding at a $2.8 billion valuation in 2024, making its newest round a significant step up.
Though long bootstrapped, Bending Spoons had previously raised equity financing several times, including in September 2022 and early 2024. Its investors include tennis and entertainment stars Andre Agassi and Bradley Cooper; tech industry figures Eric Schmidt, Mike Krieger, and Xavier Niel; and performers The Weeknd, The Chainsmokers, and Maluma.
According to Bending Spoons, its new funding will support future acquisitions and investment in its proprietary technology and AI capabilities. This is in addition to the $2.8 billion in debt financing the company disclosed as it announced its intention to acquire AOL, which will fund that deal and future acquisitions.
Bending Spoons says it intends to continue pursuing new acquisitions that expand its portfolio of consumer and enterprise digital products. With its new funding, it can afford more prominent targets. AOL and Vimeo already carry far more name recognition than earlier targets. Bending Spoons claimed that 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. Before acquiring AOL, the company was also rumored to be eyeing app maker Elysium and Typeform, the Barcelona-based SaaS company known for its form creation tools.
To support its continued growth, the company has job openings across various roles. New hires initially work from its Milan headquarters before gaining the option to work from offices in London, Madrid, and Warsaw, or remotely. Despite warning candidates that it is a demanding environment, the company says it received more than 600,000 job applications in 2025, a figure likely to climb as its recent deals generate more attention.