Markets & Business
Bending Spoons files for U.S. IPO
Italian app studio Bending Spoons has filed for a U.S. IPO, joining a wave of companies preparing to go public this summer.
Bending Spoons, the Italian app studio, has officially filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission to go public in the U.S. By submitting this filing, the company joins other high-profile firms, such as SpaceX and Anthropic, that are also preparing for an IPO (Initial Public Offering) this summer.
The company’s filing reveals a massive operational scale, reporting over 500 million monthly active users (MAU)—a metric used to track app engagement—across its suite of applications. This user base includes 9 million paying customers. The business relies heavily on recurring revenue, with subscriptions accounting for 84% of its total business.
Key financial highlights from the registration documents include:
- Annual revenue: Bending Spoons ended the year with $1.31 billion in revenue.
- Quarterly revenue: The company generated $601 million in Q1, which represents a 132% year-on-year jump.
- Quarterly profit: The business generated $27.4 million in profit in Q1 2026.
This financial engine has been constructed through an aggressive consolidation strategy. To date, Bending Spoons has made over 50 acquisitions, absorbing established digital brands such as AOL, Eventbrite, Vimeo, Komoot, WeTransfer, Evernote, and Brightcove. The company’s operational playbook is highly specific: it typically acquires a property whose “business is not in a healthy state,” subsequently trims the acquired teams, and pushes the product to profitability with different kinds of subscription structures.
The company’s rapid growth has attracted significant institutional backing. Investment management firm Baillie Gifford holds a big chunk of the company, with other institutions such as Cox Enterprises, Durable Capital Partners, and Fidelity also on the list of backers. This investor support helped Bending Spoons raise funding at an $11 billion valuation last year, up from a $2.8 billion valuation in 2024. In April, Reuters reported that the company could seek a $20 billion valuation with the IPO.
Why it matters
Bending Spoons’ IPO filing highlights the scale of its “buy-and-fix” strategy, which has turned a series of acquired digital assets into a billion-dollar revenue engine.