 | |
| Company type | Private |
|---|---|
| Founded | 2013 in Copenhagen, Denmark [1] |
| Founders |
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| Headquarters | Milan, Italy |
| Products | |
| Subsidiaries | |
| Website | bendingspoons |
Bending Spoons S.p.A. is an Italian technology conglomerate, founded in 2013 and based in Milan. The company is known primarily for mobile applications that it develops or acquires. [2]
Bending Spoons typically acquires products with existing product‑market fit [3] and manages them for long-term ownership. [4] [5]
On 17 April 2020, the Italian government released a statement on its website announcing that Bending Spoons had been selected to design and develop Italy's official COVID-19 contact tracing app, Immuni. [6] [7] The app was released on 1 June 2020. [8] It was initially released in four regions, then countrywide. [9]
The app did not receive significant adoption and successfully tracked less than 1% of the total confirmed positive cases reported during the period it was active. [10] The most commonly cited reasons for not using the app were the lack of perceived effectiveness and major technical issues. [11]
Immuni was decommissioned on December 31, 2022. [12]
In September 2022, Bending Spoons acquired FiLMiC [13] and converted its video-recording app FiLMiC Pro to a subscription revenue model. [14] In December 2023, the original FiLMiC team were laid off, and development of FiLMiC Pro was continued in-house by Bending Spoons. [15]
In November 2022, Bending Spoons agreed to acquire Evernote. [16] The acquisition was concluded in January 2023. [17] In July 2023, Evernote laid off all of its existing staff and announced it would relocate to Europe to be closer to Bending Spoons' headquarters. [18]
Bending Spoons made a series of acquisitions in 2024. In January, it acquired the assets of New York City-based mobile app developer Mosaic Group from IAC Inc.; subsequently, Mosaic's entire workforce of 330 staff members was laid off, as they were not part of the acquisition. [19] [20] Also that month, Bending Spoons acquired Meetup, a social media platform for organizing in-person and virtual activities. [21] [22] In April, the company announced that it would acquire Hopin, owner of the popular live streaming studio StreamYard. [23] Later in July, the company announced it had acquired digital publishing platform Issuu. [24] Also in July, the company agreed to acquire the Dutch file transfer service WeTransfer, then announced in September they were laying off 75% of the company's workforce. [25] [26] In November, the company agreed to acquire video platform company Brightcove for $233 million. [27]
