Bending Spoons hits $25B market cap in Nasdaq debut, doubling $11B valuation

For finance professionals, Bending Spoons’ IPO is a case study in merging private equity discipline with permanent-hold tech optimization. The company’s ability to command a $25 billion market cap – twice its last private round – on the back of $1.31 billion in 2025 revenue and a portfolio of historically under-monetized digital brands raises a crucial question: is the market correctly pricing the cash-flow durability of ‘old internet’ assets when supercharged by AI? The answer has immediate implications for how investors evaluate similar roll-up strategies in the public markets.

Bending Spoons, the secretive Milan-based tech holding company that vacuumed up household digital names like AOL, Vimeo, Meetup, Eventbrite, WeTransfer, Evernote, and Issuu, has finally stepped into the public market. The week of July 1, 2026, it listed on Nasdaq, briefly soaring to a market capitalization exceeding $25 billion – more than double the $11 billion valuation it carried in its last private funding round. Even after a modest retracement, the stock still commands a multiple that crystallizes a compelling thesis: investors see enormous value in a disciplined, AI-powered roll-up of mature software and content brands that generate recurring, if often overlooked, revenue streams.

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Bending Spoons, the secretive Milan-based tech holding company that vacuumed up household digital names like AOL, Vimeo, Meetup, Eventbrite, WeTransfer, Evernote, and Issuu, has finally stepped into the public market.

The fireworks are not just about the pop. Bending Spoons reported $1.31 billion in revenue for 2025, according to its regulatory filing. That top-line number, powered by a portfolio of over 500 million monthly active users and more than 9 million monthly paying customers as of March 2026, gives the company a distinctly private-equity feel – but with a crucial twist. Unlike a traditional PE fund that flips assets within three to five years, this Italian conglomerate buys brands and holds them permanently, injecting a standardized technology and AI layer to boost margins, drive pricing leverage, and cut costs. Co-founder and chief product officer Matteo Danieli explained to TechCrunch that customer retention has been “remarkably stable” despite aggressive price hikes and the inevitable backlash from passionate user communities, like those of note-taking legend Evernote.

The narrative of Bending Spoons as a vulture picking at dying internet carcasses is a persistent one, but former Issuu CEO Joe Hyrkin – who sold his company to the Italians in 2024 – pushed back publicly after the IPO. In a LinkedIn post, he insisted: “’Old internet brands’ is the wrong frame. They acquire products with real customer behavior, then integrate them into a centralized system of product, engineering, data, monetization, AI, and operating discipline.” That quote encapsulates the bull case: the company is not just collecting nostalgia; it is applying a modern tech stack to unlock profit where others saw stagnation.

Yet the controversy surrounding layoffs and price increases signals the operating model’s inherent tension. The efficiency play requires tough decisions, and skeptics question how long user tolerance can hold as beloved freemium services become more expensive. Bending Spoons counters with data showing stable churn, suggesting the acquired audiences are surprisingly sticky – a critical defense when much of the portfolio consists of tools consumers and businesses have woven deeply into their workflows.