BENDING SPOONS ACQUIRES AIRTABLE FOR $1.28BN

Bending Spoons, an Italian software company that listed publicly last month, has agreed to acquire Airtable, a US-based automation platform, for an enterprise value of $1.28bn in cash. The deal represents Bending Spoons' first acquisition since its public listing, which raised approximately $1.68bn at a valuation of around $18.4bn. Airtable was founded in 2013 and enables teams to build custom applications without code or engineering. The company reports that its platform is used by more than 500,000 organisations, including 80 per cent of the Fortune 100.

Airtable's valuation has declined significantly from its peak. The company was valued at $11.7bn following a $735m funding round in 2021, but earlier this year its shares traded on secondary markets at approximately $4bn. According to one report, the company has raised over $1.4bn across multiple funding rounds. Airtable reported annual recurring revenue of approximately $480m as of June this year, with year-over-year growth exceeding 20 per cent. The acquisition comes as generative AI tools such as ChatGPT and Claude have provided similar and more advanced capabilities to those offered by Airtable's platform.

Bending Spoons is led by Matteo Danieli, Luca Ferrari, Francesco Patarnello and Luca Querella, and acquires and revamps struggling digital businesses. Its portfolio includes Evernote, WeTransfer, Eventbrite and AOL. Airtable CEO Howie Liu stated that the partnership provides "the resources and the long-term commitment Airtable needs to pursue that vision even more boldly as we build the AI-native platform of the future". Bending Spoons has identified more than 1,000 businesses as potential acquisition targets for future deals.