AOL is public again — type of. Its proprietor Bending Spoons, the 13-year-old Italian firm that has been quietly acquiring beloved but ailing Internet brands for the past decade, went public on the Nasdaq immediately, opening at an over $18 billion valuation, with the inventory then popping 40% by market shut.
Headquartered in Milan, Bending Spoons utilized a number of the personal fairness playbook to a protracted collection of acquisitions — Meetup, Eventbrite, Vimeo, WeTransfer, and lots of others. However it’s not a flip-and-sell scheme: it desires to rework these firms with tech and then hold onto them.
“We wish to place ourselves as an operator that takes beloved manufacturers and makes them a lot better,” its cofounder and chief product officer, Matteo Danieli, informed TechCrunch.
The ‘how’ has generated controversy through the years, especially around layoffs. However the firm additionally drove income development, much more so with AI. “Prior to now 12 months and a half, we’ve witnessed an unbelievable acceleration within the tempo at which we had been in a position to ship new options and create worth for customers,” Danieli informed TechCrunch.
That could be the fitting factor to say when buyers, private and non-private, have far more urge for food for AI than for getting older SaaS companies. However Bending Spoons has a case: its F-1, the equal of S-1 types for international firms, features a chapter known as ‘AI earlier than it was cool’ — a nod to its roots.
Earlier than Bending Spoons, there was Evertale, “a product that might robotically create a diary of your life by leveraging what you’ll name AI immediately, and that we known as machine studying then,” Danieli mentioned. That startup failed, nevertheless it taught classes to the cofounders and crew members who now lead Bending Spoons — Luca Ferrari, Francesco Patarnello, Luca Querella, and Danieli himself.
“It sparked a mirrored image round the truth that you don’t at all times discover excellent correlation between how proficient entrepreneurs are and the success they’ve, particularly from zero to at least one. Luck is a really massive part of that equation. So we developed an obsession for locating a technique that might, as a lot as attainable, cut back the position that luck performs in development and success,” Danieli mentioned.
The corporate additionally talked about this philosophy in its F-1 with such traces as, “Luck performs a giant position to find product-market match,” and “luck is irrelevant when pursuing operational excellence.”
These mantras present up in areas like pricing its merchandise. “We attempt to leverage the delicate information monitoring, analytics infrastructure and experimentation toolkit that we’ve developed.”
In response to Danieli, this generally leads the corporate to launch extra options at no cost to drive phrase of mouth. However it has additionally led to cost will increase that sparked complaints from long-term subscribers. Regardless of this, nevertheless, he says buyer retention has been “remarkably secure.”
One acquisition was notably scrutinized. “Evernote stands out as the first product we acquired that was genuinely cherished by customers, so we had very strict judges.” That’s the one he’s most pleased with — together with its AI-heavy v11 replace. He mentioned the corporate ultimately gained over customers with its adjustments that had been praised by many subscribers, together with Evernote cofounder Phil Libin.
Bending Spoons itself began getting extra assist through the years. Valued at $11 billion in a non-public fairness spherical earlier than its IPO, it had each VC corporations and VIPs on its cap desk, together with massive names from tech and leisure. In its earlier years, nevertheless, VCs struggled to understand its approach. “We’ve obtained loads of ‘you’re loopy’ reactions all through the years,” Danieli recalled.
That’s additionally captured by the corporate’s tagline, “Not possible. Possibly.”
Specializing in expertise was additionally one of many classes that Bending Spoons’ founders discovered from their Evertale days, and hiring grew to become a spotlight. The co-founder Ferrari “invested the most effective a part of the primary two or three years engaged on tradition and hiring processes. We consider we now excel at recognizing expertise, particularly when younger and after they don’t have an incredible monitor report but.”
The numbers appear to agree. In response to its SEC submitting, “partially helped by progress in AI, income per full-time equal Spooner elevated from $1.12 million in 2023 to $2.57 million in 2025, and was $0.97 million in Q1 2026.”
This additionally explains why Bending Spoons took the bizarre determination of bringing the entire firm to New York to have a good time its itemizing. “It’s another software for us to entry the liquidity that we have to gasoline our acquisitive technique, however we additionally thought that for in the future it could be the fitting factor to take all of it in and benefit from the second with all our colleagues,” Danieli mentioned.
That’s simply in the future, although. After that, Bending Spoons will return to purchasing firms — and reap the benefits of slashed SaaS valuations it has itself managed to flee, in line with Danieli. “From a purchaser’s perspective and as an organization that grows by acquisitions, that’s really an incredible alternative and second to deploy capital.”
Once you buy by hyperlinks in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t have an effect on our editorial independence.
