Bending Spoons

Bending Spoons S.p.A. is an Italian technology conglomerate founded in 2013. Based in Milan, the company typically acquires products with existing product‑market fit[3] and manages them for long-term ownership.[4][5]

History

Luca Ferrari, Francesco Patarnello, and Matteo Danieli, worked on an unsuccessful venture-funded product startup called Evertale. They were left with $40,000, which became the seed capital for Bending Spoons in June 2013, also founded in Copenhagen.[6][7][8] The company name was inspired by a scene from the science fiction movie The Matrix.[6][9] The company moved to Milan in 2014.[8]

Immuni

On 17 April 2020, the Italian government released a statement on its website announcing that Bending Spoons had been selected to design and develop Italy's official COVID-19 contact tracing app, Immuni.[10][11] The app was released on 1 June 2020.[12] It was initially released in four regions, then countrywide.[13]

The app did not receive significant adoption and successfully tracked less than 1% of the total confirmed positive cases reported during the period it was active.[14] The most commonly cited reasons for not using the app were the lack of perceived effectiveness and major technical issues.[15]

Immuni was decommissioned on December 31, 2022.[16]

Acquisitions

In September 2022, Bending Spoons acquired FiLMiC[17] and converted its video-recording app FiLMiC Pro to a subscription revenue model.[18] In December 2023, the original FiLMiC team were laid off, and development of FiLMiC Pro was continued in-house by Bending Spoons.[19]

In November 2022, Bending Spoons agreed to acquire Evernote.[20] The acquisition was concluded in January 2023.[21] In July 2023, Evernote laid off all of its existing staff and announced it would relocate to Europe to be closer to Bending Spoons' headquarters.[22]

Bending Spoons made a series of acquisitions in 2024. In January, it acquired the assets of New York City-based mobile app developer Mosaic Group from IAC Inc.; subsequently, Mosaic's entire workforce of 330 staff members was laid off, as they were not part of the acquisition.[23][24] Also that month, Bending Spoons acquired Meetup, a social media platform for organizing in-person and virtual activities.[25][26] In April, the company announced that it would acquire Hopin, owner of the popular live streaming studio StreamYard.[27] Later in July, the company announced it had acquired digital publishing platform Issuu.[28] Also in July, the company agreed to acquire the Dutch file transfer service WeTransfer, then announced in September they were laying off 75% of the company's workforce.[29][30] In November, the company agreed to acquire video platform company Brightcove for $233 million.[31] In March, Brightcove laid off 33% of employees.[32]

In 2025, Bending Spoons acquired several companies, including Komoot in March for near €300 million, soon after which it laid off three quarters of the staff.[33][34] The company also acquired professional services software provider Harvest in June, California-based MileIQ for $233 million in July,[35] video sharing platform Vimeo in September for $1.38 billion, and AOL in October for $1.5 billion.[36][37] In December, the acquisition of Eventbrite for approximately $500 million was announced, which closed on March 10, 2026.[38][39] The following month, Vimeo laid off most of their staff, including the entire video team.[40] AOL later laid off more than 100 employees in February 2026.[41]

See also

• COVID-19 apps

External links

• Bending Spoons Apps IVS Revenue & App Download Estimates by Sensor Tower