What is spoon bending? Everything you need to know about the company acquiring Eventbrite

Milan-based Bending Spoons Group this week acquired Eventbrite for $500 million, adding the ticketing platform to its growing portfolio of well-known consumer technology brands.

The deal, announced Tuesday, marks the latest acquisition for the 12-year-old company that has quietly become one of the tech industry’s most prolific buyers — though it remains largely unknown to the general public.

So what exactly is spoon bending? Despite its catchy name, the company has remained remarkably under the radar, typically only making headlines when it adds another well-known brand to its portfolio – which now includes Evernote, WeTransfer, Meetup, Streamyard and others.

But Bending Spoons is not a traditional private equity firm or pure financial investment vehicle. Its focus is on acquiring underperforming but popular tech brands and then transforming them to serve millions of users more efficiently.

The company tends to make news when it restructures these acquired companies, often by laying off significant numbers of workers, or making controversial changes to beloved products — as it did with both Evernote and WeTransfer.

However, Bending Spoons itself remains largely unknown, even though its product roster has served more than a billion people, with more than 300 million monthly active users and 10 million paying customers. Here’s what you need to know about the company’s reshaping of some of the Internet’s most iconic brands.

What is spoon bending?

Bending Spoons describes itself as a company that acquires and transforms digital businesses. Having grown to between 400 and 500 employees (which the company calls “Spooners”), its main focus is making improvements to products and services created by others.

However, it didn’t start out that way – the Bending Spoons founders tried creating their own apps and products before eventually changing their focus.

The little-known backstory is that Bending Spoons was born from the remains of Evertale, a Copenhagen-based startup that participated in Disrupt SF 2011’s Startup Alley and raised seed funding for photo-sharing app Wink.

Evertale failed soon after, and investors were able to exit, but its founders and two employees continued to work together, initially on internal applications. Soon after, the team made its first acquisition, followed by several others, CEO and co-founder Luca Ferrari told Project 20VC podcast in a rare interview.

In 2020, Bending Spoons made an exception when it created and donated Immuni, the official Italian coronavirus (COVID-19) contact tracing app. But other than that, it was mostly refining a formula: Bending Spoons identifies a popular product that it thinks can be improved inside and out, and buys it from owners who have reached their limits.

Following the acquisition, Bending Spoons is only a passive owner, making changes to the products’ user experience and features and also to the underlying technology; Monetization strategy, including pricing; and team organization, including number of employees.

While this focus on efficiency and revenue overlaps with private equity strategies, Bending Spoons claims a key difference: it “aims to hold in perpetuity, and has never sold an acquired company.” It’s building a living wallet, not amassing Internet traces or presiding over a technology graveyard.

To be clear, Bending Spoons’ acquisition targets to date haven’t necessarily been failed companies — many of them still have significant user bases and revenues. But they tended to stagnate, be neglected, or their owners were looking to move out. Let’s recap these key deals, as well as what happened in their aftermath.

What companies has Bending Spoons acquired?

While Bending Spoons acquired several companies between 2014 and 2021, including AI-powered photo enhancer Remini, its most notable acquisitions occurred more recently.

In 2022, it acquired Filmic, known for its popular video and photo editing applications, and laid off all employees in December 2023.

In a deal also announced in 2022 and completed in early 2023, Bending Spoons also acquired Evernote, a note-taking app that reportedly reached a $1 billion valuation before running into trouble. Layoffs followed the acquisition, as well as cuts to Evernote’s free offerings.

The first half of the following year, 2024, was particularly active, as Meetup, app maker Mosaic Group, and Hopin’s StreamYard were acquired within six months.

In July 2024, it acquired publishing platform Issuu and file transfer service WeTransfer, where it later cut staff and made changes to its free plan, with stricter restrictions. Later in the year, Bending Spoons announced it would spend $233 million in a private, all-cash deal to acquire video platform Brightcove.

Acquisitions continued apace in 2025, with acquisitions including route planner Komoot and management software maker Harvest.

Bending Spoons also announced its intention to acquire Vimeo in a cash deal worth $1.38 billion and, shortly after, to acquire AOL from Yahoo for an undisclosed sum. (Disclosure: Both AOL and Yahoo are former owners of TechCrunch, in which Yahoo retains a small stake.)

According to Bending Spoons, the AOL and Vimeo acquisitions are expected to close by the end of the year, subject to standard closing conditions and regulatory approvals, including, in Vimeo’s case, shareholder approval.

Meanwhile, Bending Spoons has acquired another popular brand: Eventbrite. Again, it will pay much less than Eventbrite was previously worth — only about $500 million, a far cry from the company’s $1.76 billion valuation when it went public in 2018.

How much are bending spoons worth?

Since October 2025, Bending Spoons has become one of Europe’s rare technology companies (companies valued at more than $10 billion).

This comes on the heels of Bending Spoons’ latest funding round: $270 million from investors including T. Rowe Price and previous backers Baillie Gifford, Cox Enterprises, Durable Capital Partners and Fidelity, as well as a $440 million secondary equity sale by existing shareholders.

The company last amassed a $2.8 billion valuation in 2024, making its updated valuation of $11 billion a big step forward — also for its four founders, who have joined the ranks of billionaires as a result.

CEO Luca Ferrari’s stake in Bending Spoons is now reported to be worth $1.4 billion, while co-founders Matteo Daniele, Luca Cirella and Francesco Patarnello each have stakes worth $1.3 billion, according to Forbes estimates based on shareholder data published by the Italian business registry.

It is unclear whether any of the founders sold shares in the secondary transaction. Bending Spoons declined to comment on its founders’ stakes.

Although Bending Spoons has been in business for a long time, it has previously raised equity financing several times, including in September 2022 and early 2024. It also has heavyweights at the cap table, including tennis and entertainment stars Andre Agassi and Bradley Cooper; Tech industry giants Eric Schmidt, Mike Krieger, and Xavier Neal; and performers The Weeknd, The Chainsmokers and Maluma.

Announcing its new funding in October 2025, Bending Spoons said it would support future acquisitions and investment in its technology and AI capabilities. This comes in addition to the $2.8 billion debt financing the company disclosed when it announced its intention to acquire AOL, debt that will fund the AOL deal and future acquisitions.

What’s next?

Bending Spoons said it intends to continue pursuing new acquisitions that expand its portfolio of consumer and enterprise digital products, and now has the funding to source more high-profile targets going forward – as confirmed by its decision to acquire Eventbrite.

AOL and Vimeo already have much more name recognition than previous targets, although AOL’s terms remain undisclosed. Properties also have some access. In announcing the AOL deal, Bending Spoons claimed that AOL remains one of the top 10 most widely used email service providers in the world, with 8 million daily active users and 30 million monthly active users. (Shortly before the AOL acquisition, Bending Spoons was also rumored to be eyeing app maker Elysium and Typeform, the Barcelona-based SaaS company known for its form-building tools.)

Meant to support its ongoing corporate acquisition efforts, it also has job openings in various roles, with new hires initially working from its headquarters in Milan before having the option to work from offices in London, Madrid, Warsaw, or remotely.

In fact, despite warning candidates that Bending Spoons is a “demanding environment,” the company said it has already received more than 600,000 job applications in 2025, a number that is likely to rise as its recent deals generate additional interest.