Analysis
Bending Spoons' Nasdaq debut has become the clearest proof point that a European-founded technology company can still command a genuinely large US public-market valuation. The Milan-based company, which applies a private-equity-style playbook of acquiring and operating subscription apps including AOL, Vimeo, Evernote and WeTransfer, priced its IPO at $29 a share and closed its first trading day near $40.50 -- a nearly 40% pop that valued the 13-year-old company at roughly $25.7 billion and raised $1.68 billion in the offering.
The underlying business supports the reaction: Bending Spoons reported $1.31 billion in 2025 revenue, up sharply from prior years, serving more than 500 million monthly active users and over 9 million paying customers across its acquired-app portfolio, with four founders retaining more than 80% of voting power even after going public.
The debut is landing alongside fresh capital formation further up the European pipeline: Barcelona-based Kembara secured a reported 750 million euro first close toward a 1 billion euro deep-tech fund aimed at growth-stage European companies, part of a broader wave of sizable new European vehicles this year.
Compared to the more cautious European tech-IPO environment of recent years, when the largest European exits routinely happened through US acquisition rather than an independent public listing, Bending Spoons choosing -- and succeeding at -- a direct Nasdaq listing is a meaningfully different signal about where European-founded companies believe they can get the best price for scale.
For European growth-stage investors, the combination of a strong local IPO debut and fresh mega-fund formation is the kind of two-sided signal (proof of exit demand, plus fresh capital to fund the next cohort toward that exit) that a market needs to sustain real momentum rather than a single lucky outlier.
What to watch: whether Bending Spoons' post-IPO stock holds its debut gains through its first full quarter as a public company, and whether other European-founded tech companies follow with their own direct US or European listings rather than defaulting to an acquisition exit.
