Bending Spoons, the Milan-based company that buys and reworks digital businesses, signed a definitive agreement to acquire Airtable, the San Francisco no-code database and app-building platform. The deal was announced on 4 August 2026.
Bending Spoons will pay cash for all of Airtable's issued and outstanding shares. The transaction values Airtable at an enterprise value of $1.285 billion. Counting Airtable's net cash and cash equivalents, the implied equity value is about $2.25 billion. The boards of both companies approved the agreement unanimously.
The deal is expected to close later in 2026, subject to regulatory approvals and other customary conditions. Until then, the two companies said they would keep operating independently. It is Bending Spoons' first acquisition since it listed on Nasdaq on 1 July 2026.
What Airtable built
Airtable was founded in 2013 by Howie Liu, Emmett Nicholas and Andrew Ofstad. Liu, who remains chief executive, said the founders set out to let people build software and apps without technical skill. The product mixes the look of a spreadsheet with the structure of a database, and teams use it to build custom internal apps and automate workflows without writing code.
According to the announcement, more than 500,000 organisations use Airtable, including 80% of the Fortune 100. Large customers use it to run product operations, marketing operations and other workflows from a single shared data source.
Airtable's annual recurring revenue grew by more than 20% year on year to about $480 million as of June 2026, Bending Spoons said. The companies did not disclose Airtable's headcount or profitability.
“Partnering with Bending Spoons gives us the resources and the long-term commitment Airtable needs to pursue that vision even more boldly as we build the AI-native platform of the future.”
Why Bending Spoons is buying
Bending Spoons describes its model as buying digital businesses, transforming them, and reinvesting the earnings in more acquisitions. It says it has followed this strategy for more than a decade and has never sold a material business. Its transformations typically involve reorganising teams, replacing technology, redesigning products and changing pricing, with AI often central to the plan.
The company already owns AOL, Brightcove, Eventbrite, Evernote, Harvest, komoot, Remini, StreamYard, Vimeo and WeTransfer. It bought AOL in January 2026 and Eventbrite in March 2026. In March 2026 its products had more than 500 million monthly active users and over 9 million monthly paying customers.
Luca Ferrari, Bending Spoons' chief executive and co-founder, said the company planned to invest in Airtable for the long run and focus on its main strength of bringing teams and workflows together in one workspace. Liu said the partnership would give Airtable the resources and long-term commitment to build what he called an AI-native platform.
The funding and the price
Airtable raised about $1.3 billion from venture investors, according to Dealroom. Its backers included early investors CRV, Caffeinated Capital, DCVC and Tuesday Capital, and later-stage funds such as XN, Greenoaks, Thrive Capital, Benchmark and Coatue. At its 2021 peak, the company was valued at about $11 billion.
Dealroom calculated that the enterprise value works out to about 2.7 times annual recurring revenue, which it said was in line with listed peers such as Monday.com and Asana. Analysis summarised by Dealroom estimated that later-stage investors would get back roughly their money through liquidation preferences, while seed investors would still make a large multiple on their investment, though far less than their paper gains in late 2021.
Advisers and next steps
Willkie Farr & Gallagher acted as legal counsel to Bending Spoons, with EY Advisory handling financial and tax due diligence. Goldman Sachs Bank Europe and J.P. Morgan were co-financial advisers to the buyer. Latham & Watkins advised Airtable on legal matters and AXOM Partners acted as its financial adviser.
The companies did not say what will change for Airtable's staff or product after closing. Bending Spoons said it intended to expand what can be done with Airtable across the full spectrum of work and make it more valuable to customers of every size. Its own description of its playbook points to deep changes after a deal, from team reorganisations to new technology and pricing, but it gave no specific plans for Airtable.
