Evernote

‘SaaSpocalypse’ debate deepens as software stocks swing

Software stocks swung wildly after a week of mixed earnings and a low-priced acquisition, intensifying debate over whether AI-driven coding agents are eroding SaaS value. Italian buyout firm Bending Spoons agreed to acquire Airtable for under $1.3 billion — a fraction of its 2021 peak valuation — while earnings-related sell-offs hit HubSpot, Datadog and Figma. Conversely, Atlassian and Twilio rallied strongly after quarterly reports, and Cloudflare rose. Analysts and industry leaders offered differing views on how AI models and coding agents will affect renewals, product economics and investor sentiment across enterprise software.

Bending Spoons to buy Airtable for $1.28B

Bending Spoons agreed to acquire Airtable for an enterprise value of $1.285 billion, marking the buyer’s first major deal since going public. Airtable reported roughly $480 million in ARR with over 20% year‑over‑year growth, implying an EV/ARR near 2.7×. An SEC filing shows Airtable spun out its AI agent platform (Hyperagent) before the sale, so the transaction covers the database, customers, workflows and recurring revenue but excludes the agent business. The company’s cash position is reported differently: filings show about $965 million in cash on the balance sheet, while Bending Spoons disclosed roughly $2.25 billion in net cash and cash equivalents, yielding an implied equity value materially above the EV. The purchase price is a steep discount to Airtable’s pandemic‑era peak valuation above $11 billion (about $11.7B).

Bending Spoons IPO Tests Buy‑Gut‑Hold Strategy

This analysis examines Bending Spoons’ serial-acquirer strategy—buy, cut, raise prices, and “hold forever”—in the context of its recent US IPO. The company has acquired roughly 50 businesses (Evernote, Vimeo, WeTransfer, Eventbrite, AOL among them) and reported rapid headline growth (revenue from $387M in 2023 to $1.31B in 2025) and high margins. Much of that growth was acquisition-driven: organic revenue growth was ~13% in 2025 (7% in 2024), blended net revenue retention is 94%, and capital deployed on deals jumped from $194M in 2023 to $2.01B in Q1 2026. Large purchases include Vimeo ($1.38B) and AOL ($1.45B); the IPO priced above its reference range and finished its first trading day with a multibillion-dollar valuation. The piece questions whether the model is durable in an AI-driven era and whether the public markets are correctly valuing a highly levered, consumer-exposed rollup.