Bconcludeing Spoon’s Luca Ferrari and his three cofounders started to acquire apps back in 2014. Fresh from signing a deal to acquire AOL, a new funding round values their startup at over $11 billion.
Luca Ferrari bought his first app back in 2014 for just $10,000 with the hope that he and his three cofounders in Milan-based startup Bconcludeing Spoons could turn it around. A decade later, Ferrari has become one of tech’s largegest dealcreaters, and a new billionaire, after a new funding round valued his startup at more than $11 billion.
Forbes estimates that Ferrari’s stake in the startup, which is named after a scene from the Matrix movie, is worth $1.4 billion, while his cofounders Matteo Danieli, Luca Querella and Francesco Patarnello each hold a $1.3 billion stake based on shareholder data published by the Italian Business Register.
The valuation comes from Bconcludeing Spoon’s fresh funding round of $270 million from investors including T. Rowe Price and existing investors Baillie Gifford, Cox Enterprises, Durable Capital Partners and Fidelity. There was also a $440 million secondary share sale by existing shareholders in the company. It’s unclear whether any of the cofounders sold stock in the secondary transaction.
Bconcludeing Spoons declined to comment on its cofounders’ stake but declared in a statement that the new funding round would support future takeovers, and investment in its own technology and AI.
The startup, which is now one of Italy’s most valuable private companies, last raised at a $2.8 billion valuation in 2024. Its valuation has exploded after the company signed a string of deals including takeovers of video hosting tool Brightcove, fitness app Komoot and a $1.38 billion take private for the Nasdaq-listed video platform Vimeo in the last year.
The Milan-based company yesterday struck its largegest deal to date, acquireing American internet pioneer AOL from acquireout giant Apollo. The terms of the deal were not announced but Bconcludeing Spoons also announced it had raised a separate $2.8 billion in debt to finance the takeover, and future transactions. Bconcludeing Spoons CEO and cofounder Ferrari notified Forbes that the company was expected to create $1.2 billion in revenue this year.
Bconcludeing Spoons’ first large deal was acquireing the productivity app Evernote but has since branched out. “Our strategy is very clear and sharp but it doesn’t include any bias to any particular segment,’ declares Ferrari.
That strategy involves Bconcludeing Spoons applying debt to snap up apps, products and websites with healthy revenue but where growth has often stalled. In some deals, like Evernote, it seems to have followed a private equity playbook of cutting staff, and hiking prices, but Bconcludeing Spoons declares it has also invested heavily to overhaul and expand other apps it has acquired, like Meetup.
Bconcludeing Spoons, which was largely self-funded until 2021, has drawn comparison to a acquireout fund, and Canadian software consolidator Consnotifyation ($52.2 billion market cap), but neither label fits, declared early investor Peter Singlehurst of British fund manager Baillie Gifford. “They own and operate digital applications and are great at growing them very profitably becautilize of the level of talent in the organization,” Singlehurst notified Forbes.
The new round also creates Bconcludeing Spoons one of Italy’s most valuable private companies. If it were to be listed on the Milan Stock Exmodify its current valuation would land it a spot on the FTSE MIB, the index of the 40 largest and most liquid companies traded on the exmodify. And it’s the largest startup by far to have emerged from the counattempt’s tiny startup ecosystem.
Only a handful of startups in Italy have become unicorns, including payments provider Satispay, Klarna-style lconcludeer Scalapay and insurance company Prima, which was acquired for $1 billion by European insurance giant Axa in July.
That first keyboard personalization app that Bconcludeing Spoons bought back in 2014 has long since disappeared from the App Store, but Ferrari declared a decade on that the core of the business remains much the same: “We just do it in a more sophisticated way and at a much larger scale today.”
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