Luca Ferrari of Bending Spoon and his three co-founders began acquiring apps back in 2014. After signing a deal to purchase AOL, their startup was valued at over $11 billion in a brand new round of funding.
Bending spoon
Luca Ferrari bought his first app in 2014 for just $10,000, hoping that he and his three co-founders at Milan-based startup Bending Spoons could turn things around. A decade later, Ferrari has turn into one among tech’s biggest dealmakers and a brand new billionaire after a brand new round of funding valued his startup at greater than $11 billion.
Forbes estimates Ferrari’s involvement within the startup named after a scene from the matrix Film is price $1.4 billion, while its co-founders Matteo Danieli, Luca Querella and Francesco Patarnello each hold a $1.3 billion stake, in response to shareholder data published by Italy’s corporate registry.
The valuation comes from Bending Spoon’s latest $270 million funding round from investors including T. Rowe Price and existing investors Baillie Gifford, Cox Enterprises, Durable Capital Partners and Fidelity. There was also a $440 million secondary stock sale by existing shareholders of the corporate. It’s unclear whether any of the co-founders sold shares as a part of the secondary transaction.
Bending Spoons declined to comment on its co-founders’ involvement, but said in a press release that the brand new round of funding would support future acquisitions and investments in its technology and AI.
The startup, which is now one among Italy’s most dear private corporations, last reached a valuation of $2.8 billion in 2024. Its valuation has exploded after the corporate signed a series of deals last 12 months, including the acquisition of video hosting tool Brightcove, fitness app Komoot and a $1.38 billion privatization of Nasdaq-listed video platform Vimeo.
The Milan-based company accomplished its biggest deal yet yesterday, buying American web pioneer AOL from buyout giant Apollo. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed, but Bending Spoons also said it had raised $2.8 billion in separate debt to finance the acquisition and future transactions. said Ferrari, CEO and co-founder of Bending Spoons Forbes that the corporate should generate sales of $1.2 billion this 12 months.
Bending Spoons’ first big deal was the acquisition of productivity app Evernote, nevertheless it has since expanded. “Our strategy is very clear and clear, but does not involve targeting a specific segment,” says Ferrari.
This strategy involves Bending Spoons using debt to purchase apps, products, and web sites which have good sales but whose growth has often stalled. For some offers, e.g Evernoteappears to have followed a non-public equity approach with staff cuts and price increases, but Bending Spoons says it has also invested heavily in revamping and expanding other acquired apps like Meetup.
Bending Spoons, which was largely self-funded through 2021, has been in comparison with a buyout fund and Canadian software consolidator Constellation (market cap $52.2 billion), but neither label matches, said early investor Peter Singlehurst of U.K. fund manager Baillie Gifford. “They own and operate digital applications and are excellent at developing them very profitably because of the talent level in the organization,” Singlehurst said Forbes.
The latest round also makes Bending Spoons one among Italy’s most dear private corporations. If the corporate were to list on the Milan Stock Exchange, its current valuation would secure it a spot within the FTSE MIB, the index of the 40 largest and most liquid corporations traded on the stock exchange. And it’s by far the biggest startup to emerge from the country’s tiny startup ecosystem.
Only a handful of startups in Italy have turn into unicorns, including payments provider Satispay, Klarna-like lender Scalapay and insurance company Prima, which was acquired by European insurance giant Axa for $1 billion in July.
The first keyboard personalization app, which Bending Spoons bought in 2014, has long since disappeared from the App Store, but Ferrari said the core of the business stays largely the identical a decade later: “We’re just doing it in a more sophisticated way and on a much larger scale today.”
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