Eventbrite, once the poster child of Silicon Valley’s booming “experience economy,” is set to disappear from the public markets after agreeing to a $500 million all-cash acquisition by Milan-based Bending Spoons. The deal, expected to close in the first half of 2026, values Eventbrite at a fraction of the $1.76 billion it commanded during its 2018 IPO — a stark reflection of how far the events platform’s momentum had slowed.
For Bending Spoons, however, this is exactly the kind of opportunity it has built a reputation around. The Italian company has emerged as one of the most aggressive and unconventional consolidators in global tech, quietly collecting stagnating but culturally significant platforms — not to flip them for profit like traditional private equity, but to rebuild them for the long haul. Its portfolio already includes Evernote, Meetup, Vimeo, WeTransfer, komoot, and AOL, with Eventbrite now joining this growing constellation.
Founded in 2006 by Julia and Kevin Hartz alongside Renaud Visage, Eventbrite spent more than a decade as a rising Silicon Valley success, backed by major venture investors including Sequoia Capital and Tiger Global. But while the brand endured, its growth stalled. Audited revenue sat flat at around $325 million in both 2023 and 2024, and more recent filings put trailing 12-month revenue at $295 million — modest numbers by public-company standards.
Bending Spoons has agreed to pay roughly 1.7 times that figure, a low multiple in tech acquisition terms. Yet Eventbrite shareholders will still walk away with $4.50 per share — an 81% premium over the prior day’s close. For many investors, it’s a bittersweet recovery from years of stock decline.
This acquisition also caps an extraordinary run for Bending Spoons, which has raised massive capital to fuel its buying spree. In 2025 alone, the company secured more than €500 million in fresh debt to support its acquisition pipeline and completed one of Europe’s largest tech deals of the year with the €1.1 billion takeover of Vimeo. Earlier moves, including its 2023 purchase of Issuu, form the pattern of a company quietly constructing a portfolio of high-impact, high-recognition digital utilities.
Bending Spoons’ CEO and co-founder Luca Ferrari frames the strategy in almost philosophical terms: long-term ownership, deep operational reinvention, and product revamps designed to restore relevance. “For two decades, Eventbrite has been central to how people create and attend live experiences,” Ferrari said. “We see opportunities to make it even stronger — from better messaging to AI-powered event creation and improved search.”
Its model stands apart from both venture capital and private equity. The firm buys companies outright, strips down cost structures, raises prices where necessary, adds features, and then keeps them — not for years, but indefinitely. Competitors with similar “acquire, fix, hold” models include Constellation Software, SaaS.group, Tiny, Arising Ventures, Curious, and Calm Capital. Curious CEO Andrew Dumont has described the model simply: buy undervalued software at the right price and operate it at 20–30% margins.
Eventbrite now becomes one more piece of this long-game strategy. In 2024 alone, the platform powered 4.7 million events and issued 83 million paid tickets — clear evidence that the brand remains culturally entrenched even if its growth story no longer excites Wall Street. Julia Hartz, Eventbrite’s co-founder and CEO, called the acquisition an opportunity to reignite innovation in a company built around human connection.
Once the deal closes, Eventbrite will delist and begin life as a private company — one more iconic name absorbed into Bending Spoons’ expanding empire, and a telling sign of how global tech consolidation is redefining the future of once-celebrated platforms.
