The Italian software acquirer Bending Spoons is advancing the acquisition of the collaboration platform Miro. According to TechCrunch, the cash consideration for this transaction is $1.36 billion, corresponding to an equity value of approximately $1.79 billion, which is a significant decrease from __BJWKEEP_00004#'s valuation of around $17.5 billion at the end of 2021.
The trading price has been significantly revised downward from its higher point.
Miro was established in 2011 and was initially an online whiteboard tool. During the pandemic, the demand for remote work surged rapidly, driving the rapid expansion of such collaboration products. The company subsequently integrated more than 250 applications and established partnerships with Atlassian, Cisco, Microsoft, and Zoom among other enterprises.
In recent years, Miro has also extended its product positioning to AI collaboration scenarios, launching a whiteboard assistant, AI workflow tools, as well as connectivity capabilities that allow for context retrieval from GitHub, Jira, and Slack.
Users and revenue are still growing.
Reports show that Miro grew from around 5 million users to about 30 million users around 2022, with the number of paying customers increasing by 550% within two years. Although the growth rate slowed down thereafter, the company did not stop expanding.
Currently, the number of paid users for Miro has exceeded 4 million, with a total user base reaching 100 million. Bending Spoons indicates that the annual recurring revenue for Miro is approximately 600 million US dollars, of which 90% comes from corporate and commercial clients. The company also holds about 435 million US dollars in net cash and has already achieved profitability.
- Cash acquisition price: $1.36 billion
- Annual recurring revenue: approximately $600 million
- Total number of users: approximately 100 million
SaaS Valuation re-evaluation continues
This transaction also reflects the revaluation of the SaaS industry since its peak in 2021. As the benefits of the pandemic fade, companies have begun to cut back on software spending, reducing the purchase of duplicate applications and licenses, and single-point collaboration tools are facing greater competitive pressure.
The track occupied by Miro still has to face competitors with more substantial funding, such as Canva, Figma, and Microsoft. Corporate clients also tend to purchase complete sets of products rather than single collaboration tools. Miro once had around 1,200 employees in 2022, but later underwent two rounds of layoffs: 119 employees were laid off in February 2023, and another approximately 275 employees were laid off in October 2024.
Bending Spoons has recently been continuously acquiring software companies that were once highly valued. TechCrunch mentioned that Airtable was valued at over $11 billion in 2021, but was also acquired last month for $1.28 billion. For Bending Spoons, such software companies with stable recurring revenue and a mature user base but slowing growth are becoming a focus of mergers and acquisitions.
