Berkshire Hathaway has invested over $900 million into Bending Spoons, a Milan-based holding company, including a $330 million stake disclosed Wednesday. The move signals confidence in Bending Spoons' strategy of acquiring established software-as-a-service companies facing headwinds from AI-native competitors.
Bending Spoons, which debuted on Nasdaq in July, saw its stock rise 41 percent after the Berkshire announcement, reaching a market capitalization of roughly $30 billion. Analysts at Mizuho said Berkshire's decision to add to its position months after the IPO carries outsized weight from a long-term investor known for disciplined capital allocation.
The Italian firm has become a consolidator for aging internet properties. Its portfolio includes AOL, Vimeo, Eventbrite and Evernote—all acquired at valuations far below their peaks. Bending Spoons cites Berkshire Hathaway as a model for its holding company structure.
The economics of Bending Spoons' strategy are stark. Airtable, acquired in August for $1.3 billion, was valued at $11.3 billion less than two years earlier. Miro, purchased for $1.36 billion this month, was privately valued at $17.5 billion in 2021. These discounts reflect a brutal market recalibration: the SaaS boom of 2020-2021 has reversed sharply as investors flee unprofitable growth stories and AI agents begin displacing traditional software workflows.
Once acquired, Bending Spoons applies a consistent playbook: aggressive cost reduction. This week it announced that a large portion of Airtable's pre-acquisition team would depart with separation packages. The same pattern has played out at Evernote, Vimeo and WeTransfer. The company argues this operational optimization unlocks cash flow and margin expansion from assets that were previously unprofitable.
The broader SaaS sector reflects this distress. Intuit, HubSpot and Adobe shares are down at least 30 percent this year. Private SaaS companies are starved for capital. IPO pipelines have emptied.
"You're either like a hot thing or you're nothing," said Ethan Kurzweil, founder and managing partner at Chemistry VC, a veteran software investor. He noted that many well-managed SaaS products with solid teams exist but are no longer considered frontier assets by venture capital or public markets.
Bending Spoons was founded in 2013 by Luca Ferrari (CEO), Matteo Danieli and Francesco Patarnello. After their mobile app Evertale failed to gain traction, they shifted to identifying and acquiring mature software assets at deep discounts, then extracting value through cost discipline and margin expansion rather than revenue growth.
The bet embedded in Berkshire's stake is whether this model creates durable returns. Can a holding company buy enough aging SaaS at 70 percent discounts, optimize them to 40 percent margins, and compound capital faster than the underlying companies depreciate as AI reshapes software? Berkshire's confidence suggests the answer—at least at current valuations—is yes.
