AOL's Owner Bending Spoons Hits Wall Street with $1.7 billion IPO (apnews.com) 23
"The owner of AOL and other tech businesses hit Wall Street with a $1.7 billion initial public offering Wednesday," reports the Associated Press:
The company is getting $1 billion in proceeds, while the rest is going to shareholders. The stock surged 39.7% in its first day of trading under the symbol "BSP" on the Nasdaq, giving it a market value of $25.2 billion.
Among the company's well-known holdings are the event creation and ticketing company Eventbrite, and the video hosting service Vimeo... AOL itself went public in 1992 and was a vanguard of technology and communication. It reached a market value of $164 billion in 2000 shortly before merging with Time Warner. It then crashed along with the rest of the industry following the bursting of the dot-com bubble. It has been bought and sold several times over the last two decades...
[Italy-based Bending Spoons] was founded by three friends in 2013 following the failure of their first attempt at building a technology startup. It has since grown by buying more than 50 companies. The acquired companies are reorganized, and AI technology is often a key tool in the redesign. The focus remains on subscription-based revenue from the portfolio of businesses. The company said it had net income of $27.5 million on revenue of $601 million during the first three months of 2026. It had more than 500 million monthly active users and 9 million monthly paying customers as of March. The company has debt of just under $4.4 billion. It plans to use proceeds from the offering to invest in new acquisitions.
The article notes that in the company's prospectus, it says they chose the name Bending Spoons because "We were about to attempt to create a world-class company with $40,000, a team of five, and a track record that read 0 for 1. A touch of irony seemed appropriate."
Among the company's well-known holdings are the event creation and ticketing company Eventbrite, and the video hosting service Vimeo... AOL itself went public in 1992 and was a vanguard of technology and communication. It reached a market value of $164 billion in 2000 shortly before merging with Time Warner. It then crashed along with the rest of the industry following the bursting of the dot-com bubble. It has been bought and sold several times over the last two decades...
[Italy-based Bending Spoons] was founded by three friends in 2013 following the failure of their first attempt at building a technology startup. It has since grown by buying more than 50 companies. The acquired companies are reorganized, and AI technology is often a key tool in the redesign. The focus remains on subscription-based revenue from the portfolio of businesses. The company said it had net income of $27.5 million on revenue of $601 million during the first three months of 2026. It had more than 500 million monthly active users and 9 million monthly paying customers as of March. The company has debt of just under $4.4 billion. It plans to use proceeds from the offering to invest in new acquisitions.
The article notes that in the company's prospectus, it says they chose the name Bending Spoons because "We were about to attempt to create a world-class company with $40,000, a team of five, and a track record that read 0 for 1. A touch of irony seemed appropriate."
AOL and Tech bubbles (Score:2)
Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
Re: (Score:2)
Old people still use it.
No, that's Facebook :-)
Re: (Score:2)
I don't know what the deal included when Verizon handed the addresses to AOL, but I hope it has guarantees of continuation regardless of which shady owner controls it.
Re: (Score:2)
The address and web site may say "AOL" but the mail servers are actually Yahoo
AOL mail as it was has been dead for years.
Its a con, not magic (Score:2)
Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
In more ways than one. Did anyone explain that the phrase "Bending Spoons" represents a con, not magic, not "paranormal science", etc?
Junkyard of Tech Failures = BSP (Score:2)
Holy crap, a $1.7 billion IPO on a $27.5 million profit company holding the wet trash bag of rotting tech failures and enshittifying them with AI garbage slop for subscription fees!
1,700.0 / 0,027.5 = 61 years + Useless Holdings
Wall Street is going to barf this IPO out faster than a cat's wet hairball!
Straight to the scammy money penny stocks with you!
The only Bending of Spoons that'll happen is from heaving all that AI slop enshittified excrement coming out of the BSP bunghole that these companies are prod
Re: (Score:3)
My boss still uses aol.com as his start page and search engine.
Re: Junkyard of Tech Failures = BSP (Score:2)
Forgot the $4.4 billion debt of rotting and buried garbage pile of decomposing crap that's brewing and festering underneath with a $27.5 million profit and $601 million operating costs
$4,400 debt / $0,027.5 profit = 160 years to pay back + $601 garbage grinder operating costs to maintain the AI shit token blender
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Junkyard of Tech Failures = BSP (Score:5, Insightful)
> Wall Street is going to barf this IPO out faster than a cat's wet hairball!
I am not so sure. We appear to be in a strange bubble. Currently, many garbage producing companies are worth more than companies producing real value.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Junkyard of Tech Failures = BSP (Score:5, Funny)
The only Bending of Spoons that'll happen is from heaving all that AI slop enshittified excrement coming out of the BSP bunghole that these companies are producing.
There is no spoon.
Re: Junkyard of Tech Failures = BSP (Score:2)
They're garbage (Score:4, Interesting)
May dad lost access to his AOL email 2 months ago, and every phone call and every email exchange I've had with them since has been the exact same script. In short, he's being asked to verify who he is, even though he's never had to do so in the decade he's been with them, but there's nothing to verify against. One guy said he reviewed the case, and said from time-to-time people need to verify themselves. He couldn't have reviewed anything because he's the same guy who asked me to send a screenshot of what my dad is seeing. He would have known what the situation is. I'm fairly convinced it's some agentic AI being used because it's difficult to comprehend something being this stupid.
I can't even call them incompetent. Incompetence implies something was tried and done poorly. Nothing has been done. Zero. They're nothing but a bunch of script kiddies reading the same words over and over, never doing anything.
Goldman Sachs International, J.P. Morgan, and Allen & Company didn't do their due diligence. Whatever "metrics" they were looking at, they failed to look at the most important: how companies treat their customers. Not that they care. They got their money, so they're happy. It's the investors who will be unhappy as people leave this shit show.
Buyer beware. If a company can't fix a problem they created, you don't want them.
Trying to cash out (Score:1)
Before the tech stock all comes crashing down. Apparently Space-X is not going so well and the LLM crap in general is not looking too good now.
Re: (Score:2)
SpaceX is up 19% right now. At one time, in the three weeks that it's been public, it dipped down to only being 12% up from the IPO (and it spiked at being 60% up). Not what I would say is "not going so well."
Re: (Score:2)
Not what I would say is "not going so well."
That is because you do not understand how this game works.
What's of value in AOL? (Score:2)
You're an investor with cash. You look at this IPO and see three things. Eventbrite. Probably some value there but does it have a moat? Vimeo. Could be a competitor to YouTube if it's done properly. AOL? What the hell is there that's worth anything?