Bending Spoons Buys Airtable, a Once-$11.7B Unicorn, for $1.285B

Bending Spoons, the Italian software company that debuted on the Nasdaq on July 1, said it has agreed to acquire Airtable, the U.S. no-code collaboration platform, in an all-cash deal. The transaction values Airtable at an enterprise value of $1.285 billion, or an equity value of roughly $2.25 billion including net cash. It is Bending Spoons’ first acquisition since going public.

Airtable pairs the familiarity of a spreadsheet with the depth of a database, letting teams build the custom apps their work depends on without writing code or waiting on engineering. Founded in 2013 by Howie Liu, it is now used by more than 500,000 organizations, including 80% of the Fortune 100, and its annual recurring revenue grew more than 20% year over year to about $480 million as of June 2026.

Still, the deal underscores how far Airtable has fallen. In December 2021, a Series F led by hedge fund XN raised $735 million and valued the company at $11.7 billion, making it a poster child of the SaaS unicorn boom. Its secondary-market value later slid toward $4 billion, and the acquisition price is more than 80% below that 2021 peak — a stark example of software valuations resetting to reality.

Bending Spoons has grown through an unusual roll-up strategy: it buys digital businesses, deeply overhauls their teams, technology, interfaces, and monetization, and reinvests the earnings into more acquisitions — a compounding cycle it has run for over a decade without ever selling a material business. Its portfolio includes Evernote, WeTransfer, Vimeo, StreamYard, and Remini; it acquired AOL in January and Eventbrite in March. As of March 2026, it served more than 500 million monthly active users and over 9 million paying customers.

The deal, unanimously approved by both boards, is expected to close later this year subject to regulatory approvals, with the two companies operating independently until then. Bending Spoons CEO Luca Ferrari called Airtable “a pioneering brand reshaping how teams organize data and manage critical workflows,” while Airtable CEO Howie Liu said joining Bending Spoons gives the company “the resources and the long-term commitment” to build “the AI-native platform of the future.”

A shifting no-code market amid a SaaS reset

Airtable competes in the crowded no-code and work-management space alongside Notion, Monday.com, Smartsheet, and Coda. As the pandemic-era valuations of these SaaS firms reset, acquirers are increasingly snapping up marked-down players to transform them — exactly the playbook Bending Spoons runs.