Bending Spoons, the Milan company that owns AOL, Vimeo, Evernote, and WeTransfer, went public on the Nasdaq on 1 July 2026, and the debut left co-founder and chief executive Luca Ferrari worth about $2.4B (£1.8B) on paper, according to Forbes' calculation tied to the listing.
If you pay a monthly subscription to any app in his portfolio, that fortune was built in part on a formula you may have already felt: buy a loved product, cut most of the staff, and put the price up.
The stock was priced at $29 a share and closed its first day at $40.50, a jump of nearly 40%, according to figures reported at the close. That valued the 13-year-old company at roughly $25.7B (£19.2B) and raised $1.68B in the offering. Ferrari's four co-founders hold a combined stake that Forbes valued at $8.9B on IPO day.
The Playbook Behind the Payday
Ferrari calls his company a cross between Berkshire Hathaway and a technology firm. Strip away the flattering comparison and the mechanics are plain: Bending Spoons buys software with loyal users and stalling growth, rewrites the underlying code, then raises revenue. Often, that means layoffs and higher prices.
The numbers users have lived through are stark. When Bending Spoons bought Evernote for around $200M in 2023, the annual personal plan went from roughly $100 to $249, per Forbes, and the free tier was cut to 50 notes in total, not per month, according to the company's own changes documented by users. At WeTransfer, acquired in 2024, roughly three-quarters of staff were cut within weeks, and the free plan was capped at 10 transfers a month.
Why the Money Keeps Flowing
Here is the uncomfortable part for anyone hoping the backlash bites. It hasn't. Bending Spoons stated in its prospectus that 48% of its subscription revenue comes from customers who have stayed at least five years. People complain, then keep paying.
That stickiness is the engine. The company reported $1.31B in revenue for 2025, nearly double the year before, and swung to a small net profit in the first quarter of 2026 after a heavy loss the year prior, per its filing.
Ferrari has identified more than 1,000 further acquisition targets, worth a combined $400B in annual revenue by the company's own estimate. The apps people rely on are, increasingly, a shopping list.
The AI Angle Nobody Voted For
The efficiency Ferrari sells to investors runs on automation. He told Forbes that 90% of the company's code is now written by AI, up from under 10% a year earlier, which is how a firm with only around 620 core staff, whom it calls 'Spooners', can run more than 100 brands. That same AI is why acquired teams shrink so fast. Bending Spoons said it took on 1,830 staff through the AOL, Eventbrite, and Vimeo deals and expects only a few hundred to remain by the end of 2026.
Not everyone inside the tent stayed quiet. WeTransfer's co-founder, known as Nalden, criticised the changes after the takeover and said he was building a rival file-transfer service. Evernote's busiest user-forum threads track each price rise. The complaints are loud, documented, and so far commercially irrelevant.
What the Float Really Signals
The listing was the largest for a European startup since 2023, and it hands Ferrari public-market capital to accelerate a strategy that already touches over 500 million monthly users. Dual-class shares mean the founders keep more than 80% of the voting power, so no new shareholder can steer them off the playbook. For the roughly nine million people who pay for a Bending Spoons app, the IPO is less a finance story than a forecast.
There is a real business here, not a con. Ferrari rebuilt Evernote's ageing software and added the AI features rivals now ship as standard, and retention has held. But the pattern is set, and the war chest just got bigger. The next beloved app on the list will get the same treatment, and its users will get the same bill.
