Bending Spoons, the Milan-based serial acquirer, went public on the Nasdaq at a valuation above $18bn, growing from a roughly $40,000 seed left after a failed Copenhagen AI diary startup.
Ferrari insists Bending Spoons is not simply a private equity firm, arguing it never sells, buys to hold forever, and rebuilds acquired companies rather than making superficial changes.
Ferrari says Bending Spoons runs 99% of its AI tasks on self-hosted open-weight models at almost no cost and writes 94% of its code with AI.
Bending Spoons buys forgotten software, rebuilds it, and never sells
Bending Spoons has built a buy-and-keep machine for overlooked software businesses. Ferrari says it differs from private equity because it never sells and rebuilds acquired companies on one shared platform, run by engineers rather than financiers. Value comes from deep cost cuts and organisational change, and from hiring and AI systems that spread across each new acquisition.
Takeaways
It buys to hold and rebuilds what it buys. Ferrari accepts the investment comparison with private equity but says Bending Spoons never sells and rebuilds organisations, cloud infrastructure and code. A core team of about 800, mostly engineers, moves each company onto one platform, which makes resale nearly impossible.
Headcount cuts are a major source of value. Ferrari does not deny cutting headcount, sometimes by around 80%. He says cost efficiencies are about half of value creation and organisational changes 30 to 35%. He argues talent density, tools and culture drive innovation, not headcount.
It targets unglamorous, struggling businesses the market undervalues. Bending Spoons buys a bigger share of struggling companies than most acquirers. It wants large businesses whose results it can forecast five or six years out, and buys about five a year. AOL still has about 30m users.
Italy was a deliberate base despite Europe's talent drain. Headquartered in Milan, it chose Italy for a talent pool of roughly 60m people. Over half its team and 60% of revenue are in the US. Ferrari says about three in four top Italian graduates leave for the US.
Hiring is treated as the company's most important product. Bending Spoons hires several hundred people a year and uses data science to find signals that predict performance after twelve months. One example is a teenager who was politically active but stopped in their twenties, which predicts drive. Tracking applies only before hiring.
Self-hosted AI cuts costs and compounds across acquisitions. It runs 99% of AI tasks on self-hosted open-weight models at almost no cost and writes 94% of its code with AI, spending about $15m a year. An Evernote bug fix took about thirty minutes. Ferrari remains extremely worried about AI's wider risks.
From failed startup to Nasdaq
A Copenhagen AI diary startup raised about a million dollars and was wound down. An investor sold its shares back for $1, leaving roughly $40,000.
That money seeded Bending Spoons in 2013, and it moved to Italy about a year later.
In 2014 it bought an iOS keyboard personalization app for $10,000, then rewrote and monetized it.
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Growth came mostly from reinvested cash flow and debt, until roughly $250m of equity near the end of 2025.
The Nasdaq IPO valued it above $18bn, with revenue at a run rate of almost $4bn.