Bending Spoons to buy Airtable for $1.28B
Big news in the SaaS world:
Bending Spoons has agreed to acquire Airtable in an all-cash deal worth around $1.28 billion.
Airtable, founded in 2013, became one of the most popular no-code platforms by combining the simplicity of spreadsheets with the power of databases — allowing teams to build internal tools, manage workflows, and create custom applications without traditional coding.
The acquisition continues Bending Spoons’ strategy of acquiring established technology products and scaling them through operational changes. The company has previously acquired brands including Evernote, Vimeo, WeTransfer, and Eventbrite.
Interesting timing as well: this is Bending Spoons’ first acquisition after its Nasdaq debut earlier this year.
The bigger question:
Can Bending Spoons turn Airtable into the next chapter of enterprise software — or will the acquisition change the product that millions of teams already rely on?
What do you think?
Replies
Osaurus
Airtable was already overpriced. This is going to make it worse!
I'm going to have Fable redo all my bases as local Docker databases! I'm out!
Oh, absolutely brilliant. Classic American ingenuity at its finest—watch in awe as we collectively hand-deliver one of our last genuinely useful no-code platforms to a European app-consolidation machine for a cool $1.28 billion in cash, because who needs that kind of money cluttering up our domestic bank accounts?
Let’s unpack this masterclass in financial self-immolation, shall we?
We have Bending Spoons—an Italian company whose entire business model is essentially "buy beloved but slightly tired software, strip it for parts, and jack up the subscription price until grandma stops taking notes in Evernote"—swooping in to buy Airtable. And what do we, the brilliant American titans of industry, do? We roll over, show our bellies, and thank them for the privilege of taking our unicorn off our hands.
But wait, it gets better! This isn't just any acquisition. This is their first buy after their Nasdaq debut. So not only are we selling the farm, but we're selling it to a foreign buyer who is literally using our own public stock market to fund the purchase of our own crown jewels. Talk about a reverse Uno card. We're not just pumping money; we're hooking up a firehose to our tech sector and watering the Italian countryside.
And Justin Jincaid? Thank goodness he's here to break this news, because clearly, American business journalists have nothing else to report on except the slow-motion car crash of our SaaS dominance. "Mom Clock" indeed—because apparently, it's time for American enterprise to pack it up and go home.
Will Bending Spoons turn Airtable into the next chapter of enterprise software? Oh, absolutely. The chapter titled "How to Kill a Golden Goose with Aggressive Pricing and Feature Bloat." But hey, at least the $1.28B looks good on a spreadsheet for about five minutes before they inevitably sunset half the API and call it "streamlining."
Bravo, America. Really sticking it to the global economy by selling our future for a pile of cash that's going straight across the Atlantic. Keep pumping that money, fellas—I'm sure Justin will let us know when we have to buy it back for double the price in five years.
@laravelcompany Agree with you but the US created this playbook and has been abusing the rest of the world forever. Only fair for others do the same.
I was in the middle of exporting and shutting down my Evernote, given the last price hike of 3x for me.
Now will be exporting my Airtable and doing the same.
Since I respect myself, I will not use any software by Bending Spoons or any private equity owners
Osaurus
@huyzing same!