NEW YORK, July 5, 2026 — The digital ghost town is going public. Bending Spoons, the Italian tech holding company known for resurrecting—and sometimes reburying—once-dominant internet brands like AOL, MySpace, and Evernote, is set to debut on the New York Stock Exchange this week with a valuation of $19 billion.
The IPO marks a stunning climax for a firm that has operated largely under the radar since its founding in 2013. Instead of chasing the next hot AI startup, Bending Spoons has built a billion-dollar empire by acquiring struggling or defunct web properties at deep discounts, stripping down their code, and injecting aggressive monetization strategies. The company’s flagship assets include the remnants of AOL’s email and news arm, the productivity app Evernote, the photo-editing suite Filmic, and the enduring social network MySpace, which still generates cash from music discovery and licensing.
“Bending Spoons doesn’t build new things; it mines old ones,” said a senior tech analyst at a major investment bank, speaking on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to discuss the IPO publicly. “They buy brands with high name recognition but low operational costs, then squeeze out profit through subscription walls and ad sales. The question is whether that model can sustain a $19 billion public valuation.”
The company’s prospectus reveals a lean operation: fewer than 400 employees oversee a portfolio that reaches over 100 million monthly active users. Revenue has grown steadily, driven largely by converting free Evernote users into paying subscribers and by reviving AOL’s legacy dial-up and email services for niche, older demographics. Critics, however, warn that the company’s strategy relies on milking nostalgia rather than innovation, leaving it vulnerable to the rapid shifts in user behavior that crushed these brands in the first place.
For Wall Street, the Bending Spoons IPO is a high-stakes bet on the value of digital real estate. The company plans to use proceeds from the offering to fund further acquisitions of “undervalued internet properties”—a shopping list that industry insiders suggest could include the likes of Tumblr or even parts of Yahoo. As trading begins, the market will decide whether Bending Spoons is a shrewd value play or a museum of the web’s past.