Bending Spoons files for Nasdaq IPO, targets $20 billion valuation

Bending Spoons stepped toward Nasdaq with a filing that will test whether Wall Street will pay up for a company built not on a single breakout app, but on buying tired digital brands and trying to turn them into subscription businesses. The Milan-based firm is targeting a valuation near $20 billion, a sharp jump from its roughly $11 billion pre-money valuation in an October 2025 financing, and the pitch is clear: public investors are being asked to back an acquisition-and-turnaround model that has already swallowed names such as AOL, Vimeo and Eventbrite.

Founded in 2013, Bending Spoons describes itself as a company that acquires and improves iconic products. Its public materials say its products have served more than a billion people globally, with around 400 million monthly active users and 10 million paying customers. That scale helps explain the optimism around the offering, but it also frames the central question for the market: whether those users translate into durable growth, or whether the business looks strongest only when private capital is funding the next deal.

The company’s numbers have improved fast enough to make the IPO more than a branding exercise. Revenue rose from about $387 million in 2023 to $1.31 billion in 2025. In the first quarter of 2026, revenue reached about $601 million, up from roughly $259 million a year earlier. Net income was $27.5 million, compared with a net loss of $112.2 million in the same quarter of 2025, while operating income improved to $120.2 million from an operating loss of $4.6 million. That financial run-up is the kind of evidence public investors will scrutinize as they decide whether the growth is repeatable.

The deal structure also shows how quickly Bending Spoons has been consolidating assets. It signed an agreement to buy Vimeo on September 10, 2025 and completed that acquisition on November 24, 2025. It signed a deal for Eventbrite on December 1, 2025 and completed that purchase on March 10, 2026. Those two transactions, both involving well-known U.S. public companies, give the IPO a distinctly American strategic angle even though the buyer is Italian.

Bending Spoons has lined up Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Bank of America, BNP Paribas, Allen & Co. and Jefferies for the listing, which it has been aiming to launch at the end of June. For investors, the filing is not just another software IPO. It is a referendum on whether the market will reward a modern roll-up strategy built around legacy internet brands, recurring revenue and the promise that old names can still be reworked into profitable digital cash flow.