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AOL's owner, Bending Spoons, hits Wall
Street with $1.7 billion IPO
[July 02, 2026]
By DAMIAN J. TROISE
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 39.7% in its first day of trading under the symbol
“BSP” on the Nasdaq, giving it a market value of $25.2 billion. |
AOL's home page is shown on a computer screen, Aug. 4, 2006, in New
York. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan, File) |
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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.
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