You probably don't know Bending Spoons, but you definitely know the companies they've gutted.
Over the last few years, this low-profile Italian tech firm has quietly bought up a massive graveyard of iconic internet brands. Evernote. WeTransfer. Vimeo. Even the granddaddy of them all, AOL.
Now, they're heading to Wall Street. Bending Spoons just filed for a $1.62 billion U.S. initial public offering on the Nasdaq under the ticker BSP, aiming for a jaw-dropping valuation of up to $19 billion.
But this isn't your typical tech IPO. They aren't selling a visionary product or an AI dream. They are selling a cold-blooded financial meat grinder. If you rely on software that feels cheap, open, or free, this IPO should terrify you. It marks the absolute end of the internet you used to love.
The Software Emergency Room
Silicon Valley loves to talk about user growth, community, and changing the world. Bending Spoons talks about cash flow. Led by co-founder Luca Ferrari, the Milan-based firm operates much more like a brutal private equity shop than a software developer.
Their playbook is incredibly simple and highly effective. They look for established, household-name digital brands that are underperforming or bloated. They buy them—often using heavy debt to fund the purchase. Then, they systematically strip them down to the studs.
Look at what happened to Evernote after Bending Spoons bought it in 2023. They immediately fired most of the original staff, jacked up subscription prices, and slashed the features available to free users. If you didn't want to pay, you were basically locked out.
The strategy works beautifully on paper. According to their S-1 filing, Bending Spoons brought in $1.31 billion in revenue during 2025. In the first quarter of 2026 alone, sales rocketed 132% year-on-year to $601 million, swinging the company from a massive $112 million loss to a $27.5 million net profit.
They are turning ancient internet lemons into pure, profitable lemonade. But the cost is paid entirely by the users.
Squeezing the Casual User
For a decade, regular internet users were spoiled. Venture capital subsidized everything. We got used to massive free tiers, unlimited cloud storage, and cheap premium upgrades because tech companies cared more about adding users than making money.
Those days are completely over. Bending Spoons has turned 84% of its sales into rigid subscription plans. In March 2026, they boasted over 500 million monthly active users across their apps, but only 9 million of them are actually paying customers.
Think about that math. That means less than 2% of their user base is driving the bulk of their revenue.
What happens to the other 98%? They get squeezed. Bending Spoons doesn't care if a free user walks away, as long as the paying customers pay double. When they took over Evernote, revenue jumped by 30%, but their monthly active user base literally cut in half. They are intentionally killing off the casual user to maximize profit margins from the die-hards.
If you are a creator using Vimeo, a professional relying on WeTransfer, or someone still holding onto an old AOL account for nostalgia, expect the walls to close in. The software you use everyday is about to get more expensive, more restricted, and far less friendly.
The $400 Billion Hit List
If you think they're done, think again. The main reason Bending Spoons is going public right now is to raise cash for a massive buying spree.
In their SEC filing, the company revealed they have already mapped out more than 1,000 digital businesses as potential acquisition targets. Together, these targets represent nearly $400 billion in annual revenue. They are looking for more fixer-uppers.
They even plan to use AI as a weapon to accelerate this process. Their pitch to Wall Street investors is that AI disruption is going to panic traditional software companies. As smaller founders struggle to adapt to AI or lose their market share, they will get desperate and look for quick exits. Bending Spoons will be waiting with a checkbook, ready to buy them cheap and apply the corporate meat grinder.
Why This IPO Is a Major Risk
Before you rush out to buy shares of BSP this summer, you need to understand the dark side of this financial magic trick. This model relies heavily on debt. New borrowing funded roughly 80% of their acquisitions in early 2026, leaving the company highly leveraged at over four times its annual ebitda.
That is an incredibly high-wire act. If interest rates stay high or if they miscalculate how hard they can squeeze a user base before a brand completely collapses, the entire machine could stutter.
There's also a legitimate question about product longevity. When you cut thousands of employees—out of 1,830 workers who came with the acquisitions of AOL, Vimeo, and Eventbrite, Bending Spoons only expects to keep "a few hundred"—you lose deep institutional knowledge. Sure, their engineers might rewrite the code from scratch, but can a skeleton crew maintain the soul of a product for the next decade? Or are they just squeezing the last bit of juice out of dying brands before they vanish completely?
Protect Your Data Now
You can't stop Wall Street from falling in love with this hyper-profitable model, but you can protect your digital life from getting disrupted by it. Here's exactly what you need to do right now.
- Audit your daily tools. Look at the software you rely on for your business or personal life. Find out who owns them. If Bending Spoons or a aggressive private equity firm enters the picture, start planning an exit strategy.
- Export your data. Don't let your data get held hostage behind a sudden paywall. If you have years of notes in Evernote or vital video archives on Vimeo, back them up to a local hard drive or a neutral cloud service immediately.
- Look for open-source alternatives. The only true defense against the aggressive financialization of software is open-source tools where a boardroom of investors can't suddenly double your subscription fee overnight.
