What Happened

Bending Spoons, a Milan-based digital acquisitions firm, filed its IPO prospectus with the SEC on Monday, June 8, 2026. The company plans to list on the Nasdaq under the ticker BSP.

According to Renaissance Capital, the deal could raise up to $1.5 billion. Reuters reported in April that a listing could value the company at around $20 billion.

The company had filed confidentially back on March 13, 2026 — so this has been in motion for months.

What They Actually Own

Bending Spoons is essentially a private equity firm dressed in a tech hoodie. Founded in 2013 by CEO Luca Ferrari, the company acquires struggling or underperforming digital businesses, cuts costs, optimizes operations, and reinvests the cash into more acquisitions.

As of Q1 2026, its main portfolio companies were — in alphabetical order — AOL, Brightcove, Eventbrite, Evernote, Harvest, komoot, Remini, StreamYard, Vimeo, and WeTransfer. That's a who's-who of internet brands that peaked a decade ago.

The portfolio served over 500 million monthly active users and more than 9 million monthly paying customers as of March 2026, according to the company's prospectus.

To date, Bending Spoons has completed more than 50 acquisitions.

The Numbers

For the three months ending March 31, 2026, Bending Spoons reported:

• Revenue: $601 million
• Net income: $27.5 million

One year earlier, the same quarter looked like this:

• Revenue: $259 million
• Net loss: $112.2 million

Revenue more than doubled and the company flipped from deep losses to profitability in 12 months. For the full trailing 12 months ending March 31, 2026, revenue hit $1.6 billion, according to Renaissance Capital.

A large chunk of that revenue comes from recurring subscriptions, which means predictable cash flow. That's the one genuinely strong structural argument for the business model.

The Valuation Problem

In October 2025, Bending Spoons was valued at $11 billion in a private funding round. Reuters reported in April 2026 that a public listing could push that valuation to $20 billion. That's an 82% jump in valuation in roughly six months — before a single public share has traded.

At $20 billion, you're paying roughly 12.5x trailing revenue for a company whose core business model is buying internet brands from the early 2000s and squeezing them for subscription revenue. AOL. Evernote. WeTransfer. These are not hypergrowth companies.

The revenue trajectory is real. But investors should ask: how much of that growth came from acquisitions piling on top of each other, versus organic growth within existing properties? The prospectus doesn't make that easy to separate.

Why List in the U.S.?

As Reuters noted, foreign tech firms pursue U.S. listings because American markets — particularly Nasdaq — assign higher valuation multiples to tech names than European exchanges do.

Bending Spoons is an Italian company. It's never going to get a $20 billion valuation on the Milan Stock Exchange. So it files in New York, hires Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, and Allen & Company as lead bookrunners — alongside Wells Fargo, BofA, Jefferies, Evercore ISI, and a handful of European banks — and pitches itself to U.S. institutional investors who are more comfortable with software-style revenue multiples.

American retail investors should know they're being asked to fund an Italian holding company's growth ambitions at a premium valuation.

The IPO Window Context

Timing matters. According to Matt Kennedy, senior strategist at Renaissance Capital, the summer IPO window is active precisely because issuers are racing to get out ahead of SpaceX's expected blockbuster listing. Kennedy said issuers, bankers, and investors will "dance while the music is playing" even knowing the window can shut fast.

Companies are rushing to price while conditions are favorable, before SpaceX sucks all the oxygen out of the room and before any volatility spike closes the door.

Bending Spoons is moving at the right moment. Whether investors are wise to buy at these levels is a separate question.

What CEO Luca Ferrari Is Saying

In a letter attached to the IPO prospectus, Ferrari wrote: "We see a vast opportunity ahead. We've identified more than 1,000 digital businesses — both private and public — that could be attractive acquisition targets in the future."

One thousand potential targets. That's the strategy: keep buying, keep optimizing, keep compounding.

The strategy has worked. The question is whether it works at $20 billion, with public market scrutiny, quarterly earnings pressure, and an acquisition pipeline that requires constant capital deployment to justify the growth story.

What This Means for Regular People

If you use Vimeo, Evernote, Eventbrite, or WeTransfer, you're already a Bending Spoons customer — you just didn't know it. Expect subscription prices to stay firm or increase. The whole model depends on monetizing existing user bases harder.

If you're an investor, watch the prospectus details carefully when they price. The revenue growth is real. The profitability flip is real. Paying $20 billion for a collection of aging internet brands requires faith that Ferrari can keep finding underpriced assets and squeezing value out of them indefinitely. That's a bet on one CEO's execution.