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AOL is public again<\/a> \u2014 sort of. Its owner Bending Spoons<\/a>, the 13-year-old Italian company that has been quietly acquiring beloved but ailing internet brands for the past decade<\/a>, went public on the Nasdaq today, opening at an over $18 \u200bbillion valuation<\/a>, with the stock then popping 40% by market close.<\/p>\n Headquartered in Milan, Bending Spoons applied some of the private equity playbook to a long series of acquisitions \u2014 Meetup, Eventbrite, Vimeo, WeTransfer, and many others. But it is not a flip-and-sell scheme: It wants to transform these companies with tech and then hold on to them.<\/p>\n \u201cWe want to place ourselves as an operator that takes beloved brands and makes them much better,\u201d its co-founder and chief product officer, Matteo Danieli, told TechCrunch.<\/p>\n The \u201chow\u201d has generated controversy over the years, especially around layoffs<\/a>. But the company also drove revenue growth, even more so with AI. \u201cIn the past year and a half, we\u2019ve witnessed an incredible acceleration in the pace at which we were able to ship new features and create value for users,\u201d Danieli told TechCrunch.\u00a0<\/p>\n That may be the right thing to say when investors, public and private, have much more appetite for AI than for aging SaaS businesses. But Bending Spoons has a case: Its F-1, the equivalent of S-1 forms for foreign companies, includes a chapter called \u201cAI before it was cool\u201d \u2014 a nod to its roots.<\/p>\n Before Bending Spoons, there was Evertale<\/a>, \u201ca product that would automatically create a diary of your life by leveraging what you would call AI today, and that we called machine learning then,\u201d Danieli said.\u00a0That startup failed, but it taught lessons to the co-founders and team members who now lead Bending Spoons \u2014 Luca Ferrari, Francesco Patarnello, Luca Querella, and Danieli.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt sparked a reflection around the fact that you don\u2019t always find perfect correlation between how talented entrepreneurs are and the success they have, especially from zero to one. Luck is a very big component of that equation. So we developed an obsession for finding a strategy that would, as much as possible, reduce the role that luck plays in growth and success,\u201d Danieli said.<\/p>\n The company also mentioned this philosophy in its F-1<\/a> with such lines as, \u201cLuck plays a big role in finding product-market fit,\u201d and \u201cluck is irrelevant when pursuing operational excellence.\u201d<\/p>\n Those mantras show up in areas like pricing its products. \u201cWe try to leverage the sophisticated data tracking, analytics infrastructure and experimentation toolkit that we\u2019ve developed.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n According to Danieli, this sometimes leads the company to release more features for free to drive word of mouth. But it has also led to price increases that sparked complaints from long-term subscribers. Despite this, however, he says customer retention has been \u201cremarkably stable.\u201d<\/p>\n One acquisition was particularly scrutinized. \u201cEvernote may be the first product we acquired that was genuinely loved by users, so we had very strict judges.\u201d That\u2019s the one he\u2019s most proud of \u2014 including its AI-heavy v11<\/a> update. He said the company eventually won over users with its changes that were praised by many subscribers, including Evernote co-founder Phil Libin.<\/p>\n Bending Spoons started getting more support over the years. Valued at $11 billion<\/a> in a private equity round before its IPO, it had both VC firms and VIPs on its cap table, including big names from tech and entertainment. In its earlier years, however, VCs struggled to understand its approach<\/a>. \u201cWe\u2019ve got a lot of \u2018you\u2019re crazy\u2019 reactions throughout the years,\u201d Danieli recalled.\u00a0<\/p>\n That\u2019s also captured by the company\u2019s tagline, \u201cImpossible. Maybe.\u201d <\/p>\n Focusing on talent was also one of the lessons that Bending Spoons\u2019 founders learned from their Evertale days, and hiring became a focus. Co-founder Ferrari \u201cinvested the best part of the first two or three years working on culture and hiring processes. We believe we now excel at spotting talent, especially when young and when they don\u2019t have a great track record yet.\u201d<\/p>\n The numbers seem to agree. According to its SEC filing, \u201cin 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.\u201d<\/p>\n This also explains why Bending Spoons took the unusual decision of bringing the whole company to New York to celebrate its listing. \u201cIt\u2019s one more tool for us to access the liquidity that we need to fuel our acquisitive strategy, but we also thought that for one day it would be the right thing to take it all in and enjoy the moment with all our colleagues,\u201d Danieli said.\u00a0<\/p>\n That\u2019s just one day, though. After that, Bending Spoons will go back to buying companies \u2014 and take advantage of slashed SaaS valuations it has itself managed to escape, according to Danieli. \u201cFrom a buyer\u2019s perspective and as a company that grows through acquisitions, that\u2019s actually a great opportunity and moment to deploy capital.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission<\/a>. This doesn\u2019t affect our editorial independence.<\/em><\/p>\n