Bending Spoons buys Airtable for a tenth of its peak value

Italian technology group Bending Spoons, led by founder Luca Ferrari, is buying the popular American platform Airtable for $1.285 billion (about CZK 27 billion) — a sum that turns out to be even less than the $1.4 billion the startup had raised from investors over its entire existence.

Airtable's story is a vivid illustration of what's happening across the global SaaS market, where yesterday's tech darlings are rapidly losing value. At the peak of the tech boom in 2021, the startup was valued at more than $11 billion (CZK 230 billion). As recently as earlier this year, its shares were still trading on secondary markets at a valuation of around $4 billion. Now the deal with Bending Spoons pegs the company's equity value at only about $2.25 billion — a nearly fivefold drop in just a few years, leaving roughly a tenth of its historic peak.

Airtable, founded in 2013, built a platform that combines the features of classic spreadsheets with relational databases — a tool that lets companies build their own work applications and manage processes without coding. The service is also popular among Czech startups, digital agencies and corporate teams. According to Ferrari, Airtable's annual revenue currently stands at $480 million and is growing 20% a year.

Bending Spoons only went public a month ago, but has already earned a reputation as an aggressive buyer of digital services — the company combines a tech business with a model typical of private equity funds. Ferrari's portfolio already includes Evernote, WeTransfer, Meetup and Eventbrite, as well as last year's major acquisitions: the AOL portal for $1.5 billion and the video platform Vimeo for $1.38 billion.

For Airtable users, the change of ownership will most likely mean higher prices and fewer free features — that's exactly what Bending Spoons has done with its previous acquisitions, cutting costs and nudging customers toward more expensive paid plans. The deal still needs regulatory approval, with closing expected before the end of this year.