Bending Spoons
We Buy Apps You Love. We Fire the People Who Made Them.
$32B
Value Extracted
9
Key Initiatives
Bending Spoons is an Italian software holding company that acquires beloved apps, lays off most of their staff, and raises prices on captive users. After buying Vimeo for $1.38B, it fired the majority of staff on January 20, 2026. EnshitifAi's Extraction Index of $32B is an editorial figure, not a measured valuation.
The Story
Bending Spoons is private equity with a developer blog. The playbook is simple and repeatable: acquire a beloved software brand, fire most of the staff within weeks of close, migrate the remaining product into Bending Spoons' shared backend, raise prices on the captive user base, and pocket the margin. The rate of acquisition is now accelerating faster than the brand memorials can keep up.
Common Questions
Is Bending Spoons enshittified?
Yes. Bending Spoons runs a repeatable acquire-fire-hike playbook: it bought Evernote in January 2023 and laid off nearly all US staff by mid-2023, then acquired Vimeo for $1.38B and fired the majority of its workforce, including the core video team, on January 20, 2026, roughly 61 days after close. EnshitifAi treats it as a textbook private-equity extraction machine.
What dark patterns does Bending Spoons use?
Post-acquisition price hikes (Evernote's paid tiers were pushed to about $129.99 and $169.99 a year, roughly double their long-standing rates, while the free tier was throttled to 50 notes), introducing mandatory fees on previously free products like Meetup organizers, and quiet terms-of-service expansions. In July 2025 WeTransfer added a clause granting a perpetual royalty-free license to train ML models on user uploads, then reversed it within 48 hours after public backlash.
When did Bending Spoons start enshittifying its acquisitions?
The pattern became unmistakable with Evernote, acquired in January 2023, when it cut 129 employees in February and gutted the rest by July 2023 while raising prices. By EnshitifAi's reckoning the velocity has only accelerated since: Mosaic Group (all 330 staff laid off on close day in January 2024), Brightcove, Komoot, AOL, and Vimeo, whose majority layoff hit January 20, 2026.
Does Bending Spoons raise prices after acquiring an app?
Consistently. After acquiring Evernote it walked the Personal tier from $7.99 to $14.99 a month and pushed annual paid plans to roughly double prior rates, while shrinking the free tier to 50 notes and one notebook. It also added mandatory subscription fees to Meetup organizers whose groups had been free for 22 years. EnshitifAi's $32B Extraction Index is an editorial opinion, not a company-reported number.
Key Achievements
- 1
Evernote (acquired January 2023) — cut 129 employees in February 2023, laid off essentially all remaining staff in July 2023, migrated the product to Bending Spoons' own engineering org; free tier throttled to 50 notes and one notebook; Personal tier walked from $7.99 to $14.99/month
- 2
Mosaic Group (January 2024) — acquired and laid off all 330 staff on the day of close; the product and the payroll were resolved in the same press cycle
- 3
Meetup (January 2024) — significant February 2024 workforce reduction followed by subscription restructuring, introducing mandatory fees on organizers whose groups had never charged a cent in the 22 years prior
- 4
WeTransfer (July 2024) — ~75% of staff laid off September 2024 per CEO Luca Ferrari's own internal confirmation; in July 2025 pushed a TOS update granting a 'perpetual, worldwide, royalty-free license' to train ML models on user uploads, rolled it back within 48 hours after a 25% surge in competitor signups and a public boycott from the original founders
- 5
Brightcove (closed November 2024, $233M) — laid off two-thirds of US employees on March 19, 2025, less than four months post-close
- 6
Komoot (March 2025, ~€300M) — Europe's leading outdoor-routing platform with 45 million users; the engineering team that built the product over 15 years was reduced to maintenance staffing while Bending Spoons migrates route-planning features onto its shared runtime
- 7
AOL (October 2025, $1.5B from Yahoo) — yes, AOL; betting the captive email base annuitizes for another decade before migration fatigue clears the balance sheet
- 8
Vimeo ($1.38B, closed November 2025 → mass layoff January 20, 2026) — the majority of the workforce fired via email 61 days after close, including the entire core video engineering team that served ~250M users; second workforce reduction in under six months (Vimeo had already cut 10% in September 2025 before the deal closed)
- 9
Raised $155M in equity February 2024 at a $2.55B valuation; 2026 IPO rumored at ~$12B — capital markets are pricing the acquisition velocity itself as the asset, which means the pace is mechanically required to increase through 2027
We do not acquire companies to preserve them. We acquire them to resolve them. A resolved company has one engineering team, one finance team, one shared backend, and a subscription price that reflects the true cost of captivity.
L. Ferrari
Chief Portfolio Resolution Officer
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