🚨EXCLUSIVE: AOL Acquired for $1.5 Billion

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Voice AI Goes Mainstream in 2025

Human-like voice agents are moving from pilot to production. In Deepgram’s 2025 State of Voice AI Report, created with Opus Research, we surveyed 400 senior leaders across North America - many from $100M+ enterprises - to map what’s real and what’s next.

The data is clear:

• 97% already use voice technology; 84% plan to increase budgets this year.

• 80% still rely on traditional voice agents.

• Only 21% are very satisfied.

• Customer service tops the list of near-term wins, from task automation to order taking.

See where you stand against your peers, learn what separates leaders from laggards, and get practical guidance for deploying human-like agents in 2025.

Download the Report

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Three weeks after Bending Spoons completed its acquisition of WeTransfer in July 2024, CEO Luca Ferrari sent an email that would eliminate 75% of the Dutch file-sharing company's workforce, roughly 260 people who had helped build one of Europe's most recognizable tech brands. There were no lengthy transition periods, no gentle integration phases. Just a swift, clinical cut.

The mass firing barely made headlines. By then, the tech world had grown accustomed to Bending Spoons' playbook: buy struggling but cash-flowing subscription businesses, fire most of the staff, raise prices aggressively, and watch the profits soar. What Elon Musk made infamous at Twitter, this Milan-based company had been perfecting since 2013, except they've done it profitably across dozens of acquisitions.

In an era when most tech companies chase growth at any cost, Bending Spoons has built a $12 billion valuation, pegging it as Europe’s 8th most valuable software company, by doing the opposite: buying other people's failed dreams and squeezing them for cash.

The company's October 2025 acquisition of AOL for $1.5 billion, financed entirely through debt, represents the apex of an unlikely journey. Here was a relatively unknown Italian firm, one that hadn't raised venture capital for its first decade, swallowing an American internet icon. Bending Spoons raised $2.8 billion in new debt around the same time, with a portion going toward the AOL acquisition, bringing its total debt to approximately $4 billion. For a company that started by charging $1 for smartphone keyboard fonts, it was an audacious bet.

But audacity has become Bending Spoons' calling card. Since 2013, the company has quietly assembled a portfolio of over 30 apps serving 500 million users monthly. Unlike Silicon Valley's obsession with building the next big thing, Bending Spoons exclusively acquires struggling or stagnating products with proven product-market fit, then makes them profitable through a combination of radical cost-cutting and price increases that would make most founders queasy.

"We decided to take a very different approach," Ferrari has explained about the company's strategy after an early failed startup attempt. Instead of building from scratch, they would acquire digital products that had "substantial untapped potential"—a euphemism for apps that users loved but businesses had mismanaged.

The formula is ruthlessly consistent. When Bending Spoons bought note-taking app Evernote in early 2023, it inherited a once-beloved product that had lost its way. The company had reached a $1 billion valuation during the early smartphone era but had since stagnated under successive CEOs who couldn't reignite growth. Within months of the acquisition, Bending Spoons had dismissed more than half the staff, shuttered Evernote's California offices, and moved operations to Europe. Then came the price hike: a 63% increase for personal plans, bringing the annual cost to $130.

Users howled. Tech blogs published angry takedowns. But something interesting happened, enough customers stayed. Whether due to switching costs, the genuine quality of Evernote's product, or simple inertia, the app remained viable at its new price point. The playbook had worked again.

This ability to accurately gauge pricing power has become Bending Spoons' secret weapon. When they acquired live-streaming platform StreamYard, they raised prices by 80%, from $25 to $45 monthly. The customers who remained were the ones who truly needed the product, and were willing to pay for it.

The approach bears striking resemblance to Constellation Software, the Canadian firm that has quietly become one of the world's most successful tech companies by acquiring vertical market software, the unglamorous programs that run car dealerships and bowling alleys. But where Constellation typically maintains the businesses it buys with existing teams, Bending Spoons strips them down and uses its teams in Italy to ship new features.

The geographic arbitrage is deliberate. By firing expensive employees in markets like San Francisco and hiring twentysomething engineers in Milan and other European cities, Bending Spoons can maintain product development at a fraction of the cost. They're not trying to win the war for Silicon Valley talent; they're avoiding it entirely.

The financial engineering behind Bending Spoons' growth is as remarkable as its operational strategy. After running for nearly a decade without external funding, financed instead by Italian investors and local bank loans, the company raised its first significant equity round in 2022: $340 million at a time when it was already generating over $100 million in annual revenue. The round attracted an unlikely roster of celebrity investors including Ryan Reynolds, Andre Agassi, and The Weeknd, though Ferrari later admitted the star power had negligible impact on hiring.

What really caught the attention of serious money was Evernote. When prestigious investment firm Baillie Gifford watched Bending Spoons transform the struggling app into a profitable business within months, they didn't just invest—they came back for more. After putting money into a $155 million round that valued the company at $2.6 billion, Baillie Gifford is now seeking co-investors for a deal that could value Bending Spoons at $12 billion.

The valuation surge reflects Bending Spoons' expanding ambitions. The company's recent acquisitions have grown progressively larger: Meetup's assets from bankruptcy court, WeTransfer after it shelved IPO plans, video platform Brightcove for $233 million (a 90% premium), Vimeo for $1.38 billion (a 91% premium over its share price), and then AOL for $1.5 billion. Each deal follows the same pattern: identify a subscale public company or struggling private firm with steady cash flow, pay a premium that seems generous against depressed valuations, then execute the playbook.

The AOL acquisition represents something different, a bet that even the most faded internet brands can be revived through Bending Spoons' particular brand of financial discipline. With $2.8 billion in fresh debt for that deal alone, plus plans to continue acquiring, the company is betting it can service massive leverage through operational improvements that others can't or won't make.

For the employees of potential acquisition targets, Bending Spoons has become Silicon Valley's boogeyman, the acquirer that almost certainly means layoffs. When Bending Spoons bought video app maker Filmic, the entire staff was let go. The WeTransfer cuts eliminated three-quarters of the workforce. Even successful integrations like Remini, the AI photo enhancer that Bending Spoons grew to 90 million monthly users, came through aggressive monetization tactics including a $10 weekly subscription that most users abandon after two or three months.

Yet the model keeps working. In an industry that spent two decades prioritizing growth over profits, Bending Spoons recognized that many tech products had already found their users, they just hadn't found their business model. By applying private equity discipline to consumer apps, the company discovered an arbitrage opportunity hiding in plain sight.

The irony is inescapable. While Silicon Valley startups burn billions trying to find product-market fit, a company in Milan is worth $12 billion from buying their failures. While venture capitalists preach the gospel of growth, Bending Spoons proves that sometimes the best strategy is to let someone else do the growing, then buy them when they stumble.

With over $4 billion in debt, more than $1 billion in equity financing, and an IPO on the horizon that could create one of Europe's largest tech companies, Bending Spoons is poised to continue its acquisition spree. The company has proven that in tech's graveyard of abandoned dreams and failed pivots, there's gold to be mined, if you're willing to be the one holding the shovel.