You may not know the name Bending Spoons. But you know what it owns.
Eventbrite, Vimeo, and WeTransfer all sit under its roof. Now it wants to sell shares to the public.
Bending Spoons has filed to go public in the U.S. It joins a busy summer list that includes SpaceX and Anthropic.
An IPO is just the first sale of a firm's stock to everyday buyers. That summer list is a big deal on its own.
It has been years since this many large names lined up to list at once. Bending Spoons is the least known of the bunch.
The Italian app maker is not small, though. It says more than 500 million people use its apps each month.
About 9 million of them pay for the upgrade.
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Bending Spoons has made more than 50 deals. It has snapped up names like AOL, Evernote, Komoot, and Brightcove.
The playbook is the same each time. It buys an app that is struggling.
Then it trims the staff and pushes hard on subscriptions until the app turns a profit. Those plans now make up 84% of its sales.
Think of it as a fixer-upper investor, just for apps. Buy it cheap, cut the costs, and rent it back out for more.
The model is working, at least on paper. Revenue hit $1.31 billion last year.
First-quarter sales jumped 132% from a year earlier, to $601 million. The firm even booked a $27 million profit in that quarter.
The price tag has climbed fast too. The firm was worth $11 billion last year, up from $2.8 billion in 2024.
Reuters says it could seek a $20 billion value in the deal. That would put it near Dunkin's owner.
Big names back the company. Baillie Gifford holds a large stake, and Cox, Durable Capital, and Fidelity are also on the list.
The strategy carries risk, though. Cut too deep, and an app can wither.
Lean too hard on subscriptions, and users may leave. Public buyers will watch both closely.
A $20 billion listing would rank among the year's larger tech debuts. It would also be a rare win for an Italian tech name.
A profitable, fast-growing tech firm going public is rare these days. Most recent debuts have been money losers hoping to grow into their price.
Going public also lets early backers cash out. And it puts the firm's numbers on full display for the first time.
Investors will get their say soon. The fixer-upper model now faces its toughest test, the open market.
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