What is Bending Spoons? The little-known AOL and Vimeo owner that’s now public
What is Bending Spoons? The little-known AOL and Vimeo owner that’s now public
什么是 Bending Spoons？这家鲜为人知的 AOL 和 Vimeo 母公司现已上市
Bending Spoons, the Milan-based tech conglomerate that made headlines for acquiring the likes of AOL and Vimeo, went public on the Nasdaq this week with a pop, briefly reaching a market capitalization over $25 billion. 总部位于米兰的科技集团 Bending Spoons 因收购 AOL 和 Vimeo 等知名企业而登上头条。本周，该公司在纳斯达克上市并表现强劲，市值一度突破 250 亿美元。
While Bending Spoons stock has slightly slumped since then, its market cap remains twice double its previous private valuation of $11 billion, confirming investor appetite for its playbook and portfolio, which includes digital brands such as Meetup, Eventbrite, and WeTransfer. 尽管此后 Bending Spoons 的股价略有回落，但其市值仍是此前 110 亿美元私募估值的两倍多，这证实了投资者对其商业模式和投资组合的青睐，其旗下资产包括 Meetup、Eventbrite 和 WeTransfer 等数字品牌。
Bending Spoons’ strategy shares similarities with private equity, with the difference that it holds onto the brands it acquires. Its focus is on making them more financially successful — with tech and AI, but also often through price hikes and layoffs that have caused controversy. Bending Spoons 的策略与私募股权投资有相似之处，但不同的是，它会长期持有收购的品牌。其核心目标是通过技术和人工智能，以及经常引发争议的涨价和裁员手段，提升这些品牌的财务表现。
Speaking to TechCrunch, co-founder and chief product officer Matteo Danieli said some of the scrutiny was due to the fact that products such as Evernote were genuinely loved by their users. But he said that despite all the changes, customer retention has been “remarkably stable.” 联合创始人兼首席产品官 Matteo Danieli 在接受 TechCrunch 采访时表示，外界的部分审视是因为 Evernote 等产品深受用户喜爱。但他强调，尽管经历了种种变革，客户留存率依然“非常稳定”。
The user base of Bending Spoons itself has grown significantly in its 13 years of existence, and particularly in the last couple of years. As of March 2026, its portfolio served over 500 million monthly active users and more than 9 million monthly paying customers, according to its filing. 在成立的 13 年里，尤其是过去几年中，Bending Spoons 的用户群实现了显著增长。根据其提交的文件，截至 2026 年 3 月，其投资组合服务了超过 5 亿月活跃用户和超过 900 万月付费客户。
This also goes against the idea that Bending Spoons acquires dead companies, a narrative that entrepreneur Joe Hyrkin has been battling since selling digital publishing platform Issuu to the Italians in 2024. 这也反驳了“Bending Spoons 收购的是僵尸企业”这一观点。自 2024 年将数字出版平台 Issuu 出售给该公司以来，企业家 Joe Hyrkin 一直在反驳这种说法。
“’Old internet brands’ is the wrong frame,” Hyrkin wrote on LinkedIn after the IPO. “They acquire products with real customer behavior, then integrate them into a centralized system of product, engineering, data, monetization, AI, and operating discipline.” “‘老牌互联网品牌’这个框架是错误的，”Hyrkin 在 IPO 后于 LinkedIn 上写道。“他们收购的是拥有真实客户行为的产品，然后将其整合到一个集产品、工程、数据、变现、人工智能和运营纪律于一体的中心化系统中。”
This seems to be working: Bending Spoons reported $1.31 billion revenue in 2025; but its market capitalization indicates that investors anticipate even more. 这似乎行之有效：Bending Spoons 报告 2025 年营收为 13.1 亿美元；但其市值表明，投资者对其未来有更高的期待。
How did Bending Spoons start? The little-known backstory is that Bending Spoons was born out of 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. Bending Spoons 是如何起步的？鲜为人知的背景是，它诞生于 Evertale 的残余资产。Evertale 是一家位于哥本哈根的初创公司，曾参加 2011 年 Disrupt SF 的 Startup Alley，并为其照片共享应用 Wink 筹集了种子资金。
Evertale failed not long after, and investors were able to exit, but its founders and a couple of employees kept working together, initially on in-house apps. Soon enough, the team made its first acquisition, followed by many others, CEO and co-founder Luca Ferrari told the venture podcast 20VC in one of his rare interviews before the company decided to go public. Evertale 不久后倒闭，投资者得以退出，但其创始人和几名员工继续合作，最初专注于开发内部应用。首席执行官兼联合创始人 Luca Ferrari 在公司决定上市前接受 20VC 创投播客的一次罕见采访时表示，团队很快进行了首次收购，随后又进行了多次收购。
In 2020, Bending Spoons made an exception to its policy of no longer building its own products when it created and donated Immuni, Italy’s official COVID-19 contact-tracing app. But other than that, it has mostly been honing a formula: identifying a popular product it thinks it can improve inside and out, and buying it from owners who have reached their limits in some way. 2020 年，Bending Spoons 打破了不再开发自有产品的政策，创建并捐赠了意大利官方新冠接触者追踪应用 Immuni。除此之外，它主要在打磨一套公式：识别出其认为可以从内到外进行改进的热门产品，并从那些在某些方面已达到增长瓶颈的所有者手中将其买下。
This approach was long orthogonal to VC, and Bending Spoons remained bootstrapped for years. But it eventually raised equity financing several times, including in 2022, 2024 and 2025. Pre-IPO, it also had VIP backers like tech industry bigs Eric Schmidt, Mike Krieger, and Xavier Niel; and stars Andre Agassi, Bradley Cooper, Maluma, The Weeknd, and The Chainsmokers. 这种方法长期以来与风险投资背道而驰，Bending Spoons 多年来一直依靠自筹资金。但最终，它在 2022 年、2024 年和 2025 年多次进行了股权融资。在 IPO 前，它还获得了科技界大佬 Eric Schmidt、Mike Krieger 和 Xavier Niel，以及 Andre Agassi、Bradley Cooper、Maluma、The Weeknd 和 The Chainsmokers 等明星的支持。
What happens after a Bending Spoons acquisition? After the acquisition, Bending Spoons is anything but a passive owner, making changes to the products’ user experience and features, as well as to the underlying tech; monetization strategy, including pricing; and team organization, including headcount. Bending Spoons 收购后会发生什么？收购完成后，Bending Spoons 绝非被动的持有者，它会对产品的用户体验、功能、底层技术、包括定价在内的变现策略以及包括人员编制在内的团队组织进行调整。
While this focus on efficiency and revenue overlaps with private equity strategies, Bending Spoons claims a key difference: It “aims to hold forever, and has never sold an acquired business.” It is building a live portfolio, not presiding over a tech graveyard. 虽然这种对效率和营收的关注与私募股权策略有重叠，但 Bending Spoons 声称有一个关键区别：它“旨在永久持有，从未出售过任何被收购的企业”。它正在构建一个活跃的投资组合，而不是在管理一个科技坟场。
What companies has Bending Spoons acquired? While Bending Spoons acquired several companies between 2014 and 2021, including the AI-powered photo enhancer Remini, its most notable acquisitions happened more recently. Bending Spoons 收购了哪些公司？虽然 Bending Spoons 在 2014 年至 2021 年间收购了几家公司，包括人工智能照片增强工具 Remini，但其最引人注目的收购发生在最近。
In 2022, it acquired Filmic, known for its popular video- and photo-editing apps, and laid off the entire 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 hitting trouble. Layoffs followed the acquisition, as well as cuts to Evernote’s free offering. 2022 年，它收购了以热门视频和照片编辑应用而闻名的 Filmic，并于 2023 年 12 月解雇了全体员工。在 2022 年宣布并于 2023 年初完成的另一笔交易中，Bending Spoons 收购了 Evernote，这款笔记应用在陷入困境前据称估值曾达到 10 亿美元。收购后，公司进行了裁员，并削减了 Evernote 的免费服务。
The first half of the following year, 2024, was particularly active, with the acquisition of Meetup, app maker Mosaic Group, and Hopin’s StreamYard all happening within six months. In July 2024, it went on to acquire 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. 2024 年上半年尤为活跃，在六个月内相继收购了 Meetup、应用开发商 Mosaic Group 和 Hopin 的 StreamYard。2024 年 7 月，它又收购了出版平台 Issuu 和文件传输服务 WeTransfer，随后进行了裁员，并修改了免费计划，引入了更严格的限制。
In December 2025, WeTransfer’s cofounder Nalden criticized Bending Spoons’ decisions and said he was building another file transfer service. In November 2024, Bending Spoons announced it would spend $233 million on an all-cash take-private deal to acquire video platform Brightcove. 2025 年 12 月，WeTransfer 的联合创始人 Nalden 批评了 Bending Spoons 的决定，并表示他正在开发另一项文件传输服务。2024 年 11 月，Bending Spoons 宣布将斥资 2.33 亿美元进行全现金私有化交易，收购视频平台 Brightcove。
The acquisitions continued apace in early 2025, with 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 soon after, to acquire AOL from Yahoo for an undisclosed amount. (Disclosure: Both AOL and Yahoo are former owners of TechCrunch, and Yahoo retains a small interest.) 2025 年初，收购步伐持续加快，包括路线规划工具 Komoot 和管理软件制造商 Harvest。Bending Spoons 还宣布计划以 13.8 亿美元的全现金交易收购 Vimeo，随后又宣布从雅虎手中收购 AOL，交易金额未披露。（披露：AOL 和雅虎均为 TechCrunch 的前所有者，雅虎目前仍持有少量股份。）
In December 2025, Bending Spoons announced it would acquire yet another well-known brand: Eventbrite — and for only some $500 million, a far cry from the company’s $1.76 billion valuation when it went public in 2018. The Vimeo deal closed in the latter half of 2025, and was followed by massive layoffs impacting most of the workforce including the entire video team. The acquisitions of AOL, Eventbrite and Tractive were also comp 2025 年 12 月，Bending Spoons 宣布将收购另一个知名品牌：Eventbrite，收购价仅为约 5 亿美元，远低于该公司 2018 年上市时 17.6 亿美元的估值。Vimeo 的交易于 2025 年下半年完成，随后进行了大规模裁员，影响了包括整个视频团队在内的大部分员工。对 AOL、Eventbrite 和 Tractive 的收购也已完成。