Italian software acquirer Bending Spoons rises up to 9.8% on Nasdaq debut, valuing Milan group at $18.4bn

The IPO

Bending Spoons floated on the Nasdaq Global Select Market on Wednesday under the ticker BSP. The company and existing shareholders sold 57.97 million shares at $29 each, topping the marketed range of $26 to $28. The deal valued the group at $18.4bn and was one of the largest European listings this year.

By the close, the stock had risen to $31.85 according to the Financial Times, a gain of 9.8%, while Reuters reported an increase of nearly 7%. The jump converted the holdings of the four remaining co-founders into billion-dollar fortunes.

The business model

Founded in 2013 as a mobile-app studio, Bending Spoons has evolved into an acquirer of well-known but underperforming digital products. Its portfolio now spans Vimeo, AOL, Eventbrite, WeTransfer, Evernote, Meetup, Brightcove and Komoot, among others.

The company rebuilds each business from the ground up, integrating it onto a common platform and applying aggressive cost restructuring and pricing changes. The aim is to generate at least 25% annualised returns on capital, though the group does not flip its purchases.

The thesis of what we do is to integrate these companies very deeply onto our platform and rebuild them almost from the ground up. The technology, the product, the monetization and big parts of the team.

Revenue expanded from $387mn in 2023 to $1.31bn in 2025, a compound pace that underpinned the IPO pitch.

AI and the philosophy of minimising luck

Co-founder and chief product officer Matteo Danieli told TechCrunch that the company has been embedding machine learning into its products since its earliest days, a practice its regulatory filing dubs “AI before it was cool.”

Danieli described an earlier failed venture, Evertale, which attempted to auto-generate a life diary with machine learning. The experience, he said, taught the team that luck plays a large role in early-stage success and drove an “obsession for finding a strategy that would, as much as possible, reduce the role that luck plays in growth and success.”

The company’s F-1 filing echoes that motif, stating that “luck is irrelevant when pursuing operational excellence.”

In the past year and a half, we’ve witnessed an incredible acceleration in the pace at which we were able to ship new features and create value for users.

Workforce cuts and market reception

Bending Spoons’ methods have drawn public criticism for layoffs after acquisitions. CEO Luca Ferrari has argued that the headcount reductions are a necessary part of turning the businesses around.

The IPO was closely watched as a bellwether for investor appetite in the software sector, which faces questions about how artificial intelligence will reshape traditional business models. The above-range pricing and first-day pop suggest robust institutional demand. The debut follows other recent listings, including SpaceX and Lime parent Neutron Holdings.

What comes next

The company’s prospectus lists more than 1,000 potential acquisition targets, both public and private. Ferrari told Axios that he expects roughly 90% of those to be buyable with a sufficiently attractive offer over the next five to six years, though he cautioned that the deep integrations limit the pace to around four or five deals annually.

The biggest flaw or downside in our strategy is that these transformations are extremely time-consuming. We almost unsee a business and try to reimagine it — the most high-performance, most successful version of it — and then try to close the gap between the current state and that vision.