NEW YORK (AP) — The owner of AOL and other tech businesses hit Wall Street with a $1.7 billion initial public offering Wednesday.
Bending Spoons priced 58 million shares at $29 apiece. The company is getting $1 billion in proceeds, while the rest is going to shareholders. The stock surged 41% shortly after it started trading under the symbol “BSP” on the Nasdaq, giving it a market value of $25.5 billion.
Among the company's well-known holdings are the event
creation and ticketing company Eventbrite, and the video hosting service Vimeo. AOL, formerly America Online, is a more recent acquisition for the company. The email and search engine service dates back to the dawn of the internet age.
AOL itself went public in 1992 and was a vanguard of technology and communication. It reached a market value of $164 billion in 2000 shortly before merging with Time Warner. It then crashed along with the rest of the industry following the bursting of the dot-com bubble. It has been bought and sold several times over the last two decades.
Bending Spoons' key focus is acquiring troubled tech companies and overhauling them. The company takes its name from the fictional concept of bending spoons with the mind, as portrayed in the dystopian AI-focused “The Matrix” films. The company's founders say the name is meant to evoke focus and dedication, as well as some humor.
“We were about to attempt to create a world-class company with $40,000, a team of five, and a track record that read 0 for 1," the company wrote in its prospectus. “A touch of irony seemed appropriate.”
The Italy-based company was founded by three friends in 2013 following the failure of their first attempt at building a technology startup. It has since grown by buying more than 50 companies.
The acquired companies are reorganized, and AI technology is often a key tool in the redesign. The focus remains on subscription-based revenue from the portfolio of businesses.
The company said it had net income of $27.5 million on revenue of $601 million during the first three months of 2026. It had more than 500 million monthly active users and 9 million monthly paying customers as of March.
The company has debt of just under $4.4 billion. It plans to use proceeds from the offering to invest in new acquisitions.
The Bending Spoons offering comes amid a resurgence in the IPO market this year, highlighted by the record-setting market debut of SpaceX last month.
