What is Bending Spoons? The little-known AOL and Vimeo owner that’s now public

Four of Bending Spoons’ cofounders have remained at its helm over the years: Matteo Danieli, Luca Ferrari, Francesco Patarnello, and Luca Querella. The IPO made them billionaires, at least on paper, while retaining control of the company, with more than 80% of the voting power.

Some of their decisions will affect workers. According to the company, it added “1,830 full-time equivalent team members through the acquisitions of AOL, Eventbrite, and Vimeo” but has already “parted ways” with many, and will continue. “Once the transformations of the three businesses are substantially complete later in 2026, we expect only a few hundred to remain.”

This headcount reduction presumably won’t affect the number of “Spooners” — the term Bending Spoons reserves to some core team members that have gone through its highly selective hiring process. There are currently some 620 of them, but that number hasn’t grown fast: in 2025, it only made 286 hires out of some 800,000 job applications.

Core headcount may not have increased by much, but productivity has. “In part helped by progress in AI, revenue per full-time equivalent Spooner increased from $1.12 million in 2023 to $2.57 million in 2025, and was $0.97 million in Q1 2026,” the company said. It helped it escape the SaaS reckoning it now also hopes to benefit from.

“As many businesses struggle to adapt, our ability to expand the earnings of an acquired business may improve,” Bending Spoons observed. In addition, “an environment of greater uncertainty could provide opportunities for us to acquire businesses at more favorable valuations.”

Despite what it sees as a favorable moment, Bending Spoons has remained selective in its acquisitions, but keeps on a wide net. By its own reporting, it sourced over 2,500 acquisition opportunities in 2025, conducted in-depth analyses of approximately 200 of them, and completed six acquisitions. More will certainly follow — that’s the playbook.

“We’ve identified more than 1,000 digital businesses (both private and public) that could be attractive acquisition targets in the future, representing nearly $400 billion in aggregate estimated revenue in 2025,” Ferrari wrote in a letter on behalf of the Bending Spoons team.

The playbook hasn’t changed, but the hint at take-privates is a reminder that the company has gone from paying “$10,000 for our first acquisition” to now “pursuing acquisitions in the billions of dollars.” 

What follows may be even more intense. “As AI enables us to accomplish more with fewer people, the scalability of our acquisition and transformation model should improve as well,” Ferrari predicted.

This story was originally published in October 2025 and is updated periodically with new information.