Bending spoons, the Italian company that owns the video platform Vimeo and the internet services company aol, has priced its IPO (initial public offering) in United States a dollars 29 for action, above of the expected band, collecting 1,68 billions of dollars. This is one of the very few IPOs in the software sector, grappling with the radical transformation caused by the'artificial intelligence. The bell that will mark the beginning of the trading on the Nasdaq Global Select Market will open today at 9:30 a.m. New York (3:30 p.m. Italian time) under the ticker "BSP." Goldman Sachs Group, JPMorgan Chase, and Allen & Co. are the lead underwriters of the initial public offering, joined by a large group of international banks in addition to Italian ones. Imi–Intesa Sanpaolo, UniCredit, and Banca Akros–Banco Bpm Group.
The company and its existing shareholders sold approximately 58 million shares, valuing Bending Spoons at approximately $18,4 billion, based on the outstanding shares reported in the filings. The listing is among the largest stock market debuts of a European company. In its last financing round in 2025, the company was valued at $11 billion. Among the longtime investors, Drums Investment Partners Giovanni Tamburi, with approximately 3% of the company: a stake that, at the expected valuation, would be worth around $600 million. The family's holding company, H14, has already liquidated its position. Berlusconi, released in 2023.
The operation comes at a time when the US IPO market has regained momentum after a slowdown phase. The record debut of SpaceX in early June, the largest IPO ever recorded, followed Cerebras Systems at the beginning of the year. Bending spoons, whose name is inspired by a scene from the science fiction film Matrix, has emerged as one of the Europe's most important technology companies, pursuing a acquisition strategy of underperforming software companies with subsequent renovation and significant staff cuts. The first purchase was made with $10.000: in the first quarter of 2026 alone, capital invested in acquisitions exceeded 2 billions of dollars.
Among the brands acquired by Bending Spoons in recent years are the note-taking app Evernote, the file sharing platform WeTransfer, the video hosting service Vimeo, the streaming technology company brightcove, the social networking platform Meetup, Komoot, Harvest and the web portal Aol.
The CEO Luke Ferrari, co-founder of the company in 2013 and often seen in sneakers and oversized sweatshirts at its Milan headquarters, described the strategy as a “hybrid” between a bottom of private equity and a'technology company like Alphabet's Google. “We are engineers and scientists and we spend almost all of our time developing technologies and products,” he said.
“It's the dead of night, August 2, 2010, in Lombok, Indonesia. The three of us – Francesco Patarnello, Matteo Danieli and Luca Ferrari "We're exhausted after long days of backpacking, undertaken to celebrate our engineering graduation. We should have fallen asleep hours ago, but we can't. We just decided to start a company together. And we're too excited to sleep." This is how Luca Ferrari's letter to investors begins in the F-1 document filed on June 8 with the SEC for the IPO. A fourth has joined the three young men, Luca Querella.
Bending Spoons counts 715 employees and 900.000 applications received in 2025 alone, with a hiring rate of 0,04%, i.e. 85 times more selective than Harvard. Those who join Bending Spoons enter one of the most demanding and formative work environments in Europe today. Those who leave bring with them a resume and a network unprecedented in Italy. The graduate program starts at €66.000 per year and attracts talent from around the world. The value created by Bending Spoons won't stay within Bending Spoons. It will spread through people, skills, capital, and new entrepreneurial initiatives. Bending Spoons could be the sliding door of tech in Italy: the moment before which everything was as it was, and after which nothing will ever be the same.
Governance after the listing
After the listing, Bending Spoons will remain in the hands of its founders. None of the four will sell their Class A preferred shares, which guarantee increased voting rights. Post-IPO voting rights: Luca Ferrari 21,9%, Matteo Danieli 20,6%, Luca Querella 20,2%, Francesco Patarnello 19,9%. Each founder will cede only 0,4% of their total voting rights.
Those who enter the market with significant capital are the top manager. The CFO David Scarpazza holds over 3,8 million shares – a theoretical value of over $100 million. The CTO Francesco Mancone owns 1,9 million, the co-CFO Enrico Martinelli 1,55 million: for both a theoretical value between 40 and 50 million dollars.
On the selling side, the funds that have supported the company over time are exiting. Galileo Quattordici will sell at least 11,3 million shares for approximately $300 million. Baillie Gifford Overseas will sell at least 7 million shares for approximately $190 million. Tamburi's TIP will sell 2 million shares but retain over 15 million shares. He Holdco and Tiger Iron will exit entirely.
The offering is scheduled to close tomorrow, July 2nd, subject to the customary conditions precedent, when the proceeds from the sale of all the shares put on the market by Bending Spoons and the shareholders who are selling part of their stakes will be collected.
