When it listed on NASDAQ in July this year, Bending Spoons was still an obscure holding company from Italy, owning established internet brands such as AOL, Vimeo, Eventbrite, and Evernote.

In less than four months, this company headquartered in Milan has become the unexpected fate of a once-star software startup that was pushed to the sidelines by the artificial intelligence boom. This week, its merger and acquisition plan has received significant support from one of the most famous holding companies on Earth—Berkshire Hathaway.

Bending Spoons describes Berkshire Hathaway as a “long-term source of inspiration” for its strategy. To date, Berkshire has invested over $900 million in the company, including the $330 million stake disclosed on Wednesday. Wall Street reacted enthusiastically to this transaction, driving the stock price of Bending Spoons up by 41%; however, some of that gain was lost in the latter half of the week, and the company's market value is now around $30 billion.

An analyst from the American investment bank Mizuho wrote in a report after the announcement: "Berkshire has continued to increase its holdings just months after IPO, and at the current price level, which once again demonstrates that one of the world's most respected long-term investors has placed its trust in the Bending Spoons model."

Another major piece of news this week highlights another aspect of this business: layoffs. In August, Bending Spoons announced that it would acquire workflow software provider Airtable for approximately $1.3 billion, at a price that is nearly 90% lower than the company's peak valuation at the end of 2021. Bending Spoons stated on Monday that “a considerable portion” of the team members before the acquisition would leave and would receive “substantial severance packages.” Previously, layoffs had also been implemented at assets under Evernote, Vimeo, WeTransfer, and others.

For the tech industry, the actions of Bending Spoons are the latest example of the rapid shift of wealth in the era of artificial intelligence. New types of intelligentsia driven by large language models are replacing software developers and the products they create. As Anthropic and OpenAI move towards trillions of dollars in valuation, companies are entrusting them with more valuable tasks, at the expense of numerous software as a service (SaaS) companies. This phenomenon is known as “SaaSpocalypse”.

The stock prices of Intuit, HubSpot, and Adobe have all fallen by at least 30% this year, while a long list of once-prosperous private SaaS companies are now struggling to obtain capital, and the public market shows no interest in IPO at all. Last month, Bending Spoons agreed to acquire collaborative software provider Miro for $1.36 billion; the latter was once valued at $17.5 billion.

“You’re either hot, or you’re nothing at all,” says Ethan Kurzweil, a senior software investor and founder as well as managing partner of Chemistry VC. Kurzweil mentioned that he himself also uses Airtable and noted that there are still many excellent SaaS products and solid teams in the market, “but they’re no longer at the forefront.”

From application developer to acquirer

Bending Spoons was founded in 2013 by three friends: Luca Ferrari, Matteo Danieli, and Francesco Patarnello. Ferrari currently serves as the CEO. According to the prospectus, their initial mobile application, Evertale, was not successful. Therefore, with the remaining $40,000 they had on hand, they decided to establish an operating company instead of continuing to work on a product that no one wanted.

Over the past few years, Bending Spoons has announced its largest transactions: in 2022 it acquired Evernote, in 2024 it acquired Brightcove, and in 2025 it acquired Vimeo, AOL, and Eventbrite.

On June 30th, the company completed IPO, raising approximately $1.7 billion at a price of $29 per share, and went public on NASDAQ the following day. The stock closed at $47.07 on last Friday.

Before Bending Spoons made a major entry into enterprise software recently, one of the main acquirers in this field over the past decade were private equity giants Thoma Bravo and Vista Equity Partners. These companies attempted to buy what they considered to be undervalued SaaS enterprises and transformed them into assets that could be sold at a higher valuation or re-listed by cutting costs, improving efficiency, and through mergers and acquisitions.

Bending Spoons follows a different approach. The company does not seek a final exit but aims to continuously generate profits from the businesses it acquires, similar to Warren Buffett's model. However, unlike Berkshire Hathaway, Bending Spoons focuses on technology and personally gets deeply involved in software, operations, and personnel decisions.

The former cloud software provider Gainsight's CEO, Nick Mehta, stated that private equity firms are now limited by the fact that they have "already suffered losses."

“They paid a much higher price back then, and now they have so many troublesome companies on their hands, so it’s difficult for them to be bold again,” said Mehta. In 2020, he sold Gainsight to Vista.

Thoma Bravo and Vista did not respond to interview requests. Bending Spoons, on the other hand, stated in a declaration that the company "has not been outbid by others on its targets for several years now."

As companies began to increase their investment in SaaS, Mehta noted that a verb "Bending Spooned" emerged in Silicon Valley, used to describe companies being acquired at extremely low prices.

“Unfortunately, many of my friends in that circle are stuck,” said Mehta. “Investors want to get out, but there are no buyers. Everything from before ChatGPT is now considered legacy assets.”

Mizuho analyst Lloyd Walmsley stated that the model of Bending Spoons is different from traditional acquisition models.

“I think very few people can achieve such a level of operational depth and willingness to make large-scale product changes as these individuals,” Walmsley said in an interview. “Traditional private equity firms usually do not make changes of this magnitude.”

For corporate clients acquired by Bending Spoons, what often follows is a sudden increase in prices.

In April 2023, several months after acquiring Evernote, Bending Spoons raised the personal annual subscription price from $70 to $130. Later, the company adjusted its product offerings, charging $100 for what it called the entry-level package and $250 for “Evernote Advanced”, whereas the previous professional version package cost $170.

“My first reaction was, ‘Oh my God, I’ll probably have to switch to OneNote,’” said Walmsley, referring to Microsoft’s notepad application. However, he stated that in the end, he continued to use Evernote.

“They’re really good at finding things that provide a lot of value and have a high conversion cost,” said Walmsley. “Compared to the conversion cost, the price isn’t considered high.”

On Thursday, in an interview with CNBC, Ferrari stated that Bending Spoons will use the profits of its subsidiaries for future growth, and that "the vast majority" of this future growth will come from conducting more transactions.

"We can seize some opportunities for improvement in the initial years, and after that, the business will develop according to the inherent growth potential of that market itself," said Ferrari.

For Berkshire and other Bending Spoons investors, this bet has yet to be verified.

As artificial intelligence squeezes most of the profit margins in the software industry, these products must maintain sufficient attractiveness to convince customers to pay a higher price. In its first financial report after going public in August, Bending Spoons stated that revenue more than doubled compared to the same period last year, exceeding $700 million, with almost all of the growth driven by acquisitions; net profit increased by 171% to $177 million.

However, that was before the Airtable transaction was completed and before the Miro announcement was made. In the coming quarters and years, Wall Street will have a clear view of whether this structure can truly revitalize the software business.

During the August financial report conference call, an analyst asked whether Airtable indicated that the company's acquisition strategy was shifting towards enterprise software in the long term.

Ferrari indicates that approximately half of Bending Spoons's revenue already comes from its professional services, mainly through Brightcove and Vimeo, which also include corporate services. He said that the company has recently focused on software because, after experiencing significant sales declines, he saw value in these areas.

“Until not long ago, the valuations of most companies’ SaaS businesses were unreasonably high,” said Ferrari. “We never found any logic in those prices at all.”

CNBC's Ari Levy has contributed to this report.