Bending Spoons has already acquired some of the internet’s most recognizable software brands. And it has identified more than 1,000 others it could potentially acquire.
The Milan-based company, whose portfolio includes Evernote, WeTransfer, Vimeo, AOL, and Eventbrite, disclosed the figure in its IPO prospectus. Together, those potential targets generated nearly $400 billion in estimated revenue in 2025.
Bending Spoons has hardly slowed down since its stock market debut in July. It has completed acquisitions of Airtable and Miro, and in October, Berkshire Hathaway invested another $330 million, bringing its ownership stake to 4%.
Its business model—buy an established product with paying customers, reorganize the company, reduce costs, improve the technology, and use the profits to pursue more acquisitions—is attracting attention across the software industry. And the results have generally been impressive.
But so have the job cuts. As AI makes software cheaper to develop and maintain, Bending Spoons may now be establishing a new model for an industry accustomed to prioritizing growth over profitability.
WHY BUYING OLD SOFTWARE MAKES FINANCIAL SENSE
Building a successful software business is expensive. A company could spend years developing a product, attracting customers, and trying to persuade them to pay for it with no guarantee it will succeed. Buying an established business, however, reduces some of that uncertainty.
“From an investor’s perspective, the fundamental advantage is that you’re buying proven behavior rather than financing the search for it,” says Vince Molinari, a financial services expert and founder and CEO of Fintech Media Group.
An established product already has customers, revenue, brand recognition, and a distribution network. For an acquirer, the opportunity often lies in improving how the business operates. Molinari places particular importance on customer retention. A company with loyal subscribers and inefficient operations may be more attractive than a fast-growing business whose customers regularly leave.
“Revenue tells you what customers paid yesterday. Retention helps tell you whether they’ll still be paying tomorrow,” he tells Fast Company.
Bending Spoons’ second-quarter results illustrate the appeal. Revenue rose 126% from a year earlier to $704 million, while operating income increased 139% to $240 million.
But acquisitions accounted for most of the revenue growth. Looking at its businesses without the extra revenue added by acquisitions, growth was just 3%. The figures show how heavily the company’s expansion still depends on buying businesses, rather than growing revenue from the ones it owns. “The next billion-dollar opportunity doesn’t necessarily start with the next big idea,” says Nadja Atwal, an international business adviser. “Sometimes it starts with recognizing that someone else’s old big idea still has plenty of life left in it.”
THE COST OF MAKING SOFTWARE MORE PROFITABLE
Bending Spoons is unusually willing to make sweeping changes after an acquisition. Its IPO filing disclosed that AOL, Eventbrite, and Vimeo collectively brought approximately 1,830 full-time-equivalent employees into the company. According to the filing, Bending Spoons planned to retain only a few hundred of those employees after restructuring the businesses.
The scale of such restructuring has attracted much criticism, but Vimeo offers an example of how Bending Spoons believes its approach can improve acquired products.
At Vimeo, Bending Spoons reported more than 30 product improvements during the second quarter, alongside a roughly 90% reduction in system-stability incidents compared with pre-acquisition levels. Uploads and searches also became at least 30% faster, according to the company.
These are encouraging results, although they are company-reported figures. Improvements in speed and reliability don’t necessarily tell us how customers feel about pricing, support, or the product’s direction.
Matteo Danieli, Bending Spoons’ cofounder and VP of product, told Fast Company last month that the company’s acquisition-driven growth gives its teams more freedom to concentrate on improving existing products. “We do not necessarily need to prove massive growth on products, and so we are actually free to focus on what’s useful for users,” he said.
Eliminating duplicated expenses, consolidating infrastructure, and improving how products are sold can make an acquired business substantially more profitable. But lower operating costs alone cannot establish whether a company is becoming healthier. Cutting too deeply can also mean losing experienced employees and the knowledge needed to maintain and improve a product.
“You can make almost any company look better for several quarters by cutting enough people and expenses. The real test is what happens three or five years later,” Molinari says.
Customers may judge the changes differently from investors. Faster software and new features can improve their experience, but higher prices, declining support, or unwanted product changes could weaken the loyalty that made these businesses attractive to acquire in the first place.
AI COULD CHANGE THE ECONOMICS EVEN FURTHER
Bending Spoons is betting that AI will help it accomplish more with smaller teams, and its own software-development figures suggest how quickly the technology is becoming part of its operations.
In its IPO prospectus, the company estimated that AI authored or coauthored more than 90% of software-code changes submitted for review by the end of March 2026, compared with less than 10% a year earlier.
That doesn’t mean AI independently builds or maintains its products. Engineers still have to review code, make decisions, and ensure software works reliably. But it demonstrates how extensively the company has incorporated AI into development.
Mohamed Mohamed, founder and CEO of applied AI company SmartBricks and a venture scout at a16z Speedrun, believes the implications could extend well beyond Bending Spoons’ engineering costs.
“AI is rapidly reducing the cost of developing, maintaining, and improving software,” he says. “That potentially makes acquiring established software businesses even more attractive because an acquirer can operate them with a fundamentally different cost structure.”
Marina Mogilko, an entrepreneur, investor, and creator who hosts the podcast Silicon Valley Girl, sees a parallel in the creator economy. She points to Electrify Video Partners’ majority investment in Veritasium, the popular science YouTube channel founded by Derek Muller. Electrify provides operational and commercial support while Muller retains an ownership interest and continues creating content.
“Centralizing operations, hiring, and monetization under one roof frees creative teams to focus on their craft, while giving the buyer decades of built-in brand trust and organic distribution that would cost a fortune to build from scratch today,” Mogilko says.
The comparison, while poignant, also has its limits. At Veritasium, for example, Muller remains central to the business, while Bending Spoons has often replaced much of the original workforce at companies it acquires. And that raises a question about how much institutional knowledge an acquirer can afford to lose while reorganizing a business.
CAN BENDING SPOONS KEEP ITS ADVANTAGE?
The reality is that the same AI tools that could make Bending Spoons’ acquisitions more profitable may also make the software it buys easier to compete against. As AI coding tools lower development costs, smaller teams can increasingly build products that once required far greater resources, putting pressure on established businesses to give customers compelling reasons to stay.
Cheaper software development could also change how investors value the businesses they acquire. “I believe we’re moving towards a world where the value of a software company is increasingly determined by the assets surrounding its technology rather than the technology itself,” SmartBricks’ Mohamed says. That would give established software businesses an advantage only if their customers, distribution networks, and other assets remain difficult for competitors to replicate.
Bending Spoons has advantages that would be difficult for newcomers to match, including acquisition experience, access to financing, and an expanding technical operation. But acquisitions require capital, and the company ended June with approximately $4.09 billion in net debt. That increases the importance of generating lasting returns from the businesses it buys.
Mohamed believes those returns should be measured beyond immediate improvements in profitability. “Ultimately, the sustainability of this model depends on whether customer lifetime value improves, not simply whether EBITDA increases,” he says.
The list of more than 1,000 prospective acquisitions suggests that finding companies to buy is unlikely to be its immediate problem. But acquiring more businesses also means taking responsibility for the products and customer relationships that made them valuable. Mogilko thinks the biggest test comes after the deal closes.
“The real question—and the biggest risk to this model’s long-term sustainability—is how you maintain the soul of the company after replacing the original team and raising prices,” she says.
Bending Spoons has demonstrated how much financial value can be unlocked from established software businesses. Its growing portfolio suggests it has little intention of slowing down. But every acquisition brings customers whose loyalty was earned long before Bending Spoons arrived. The company’s future may depend as much on giving them reasons to stay as on finding the next business to buy.