Bending Spoons Buys Miro for $1.36B in Shocking 90 Percent Valuation Plunge

TL;DR

• Bending Spoons has agreed to acquire visual collaboration startup Miro for $1.36 billion in cash, a stunning 92% drop from Miro's $17.5 billion peak valuation in early 2022.
• The fire-sale price reflects the collapse of the pandemic-era whiteboard boom, intensifying competition from Figma, Microsoft and AI-native startups, and investor pressure for profitability over growth.
• The deal marks Bending Spoons' fifth major SaaS takeover in three years, cementing the Italian firm's playbook of buying faded unicorns, slashing costs, and rebuilding them for profit.

From $17.5 Billion Darling to $1.36 Billion Bargain

In one of the most dramatic downfalls of the post-ZIRP era, Miro is being sold for a fraction of what it was once worth.

Italian tech conglomerate Bending Spoons confirmed on September 9, 2026, that it will acquire Miro in an all-cash deal valued at $1.36 billion. The transaction is expected to close in Q4 2026 pending regulatory approval.

Just four years ago, Miro was the poster child of remote work. In January 2022, the Amsterdam-born startup raised $400 million in Series C funding led by ICONIQ Capital at a $17.5 billion valuation, making it one of Europe's most valuable private tech companies. At the time, it boasted more than 35 million users and triple-digit revenue growth as distributed teams flocked to its infinite digital whiteboard.

Today's price represents a loss of more than $16 billion in paper value — a 92% plunge that wipes out almost all gains from the 2020-2021 boom.

Why Miro Crashed So Hard

Miro didn't collapse overnight. It was squeezed from every direction.

First, the pandemic tailwind reversed. As companies issued return-to-office mandates in 2023 and 2024, demand for purely virtual brainstorming tools flattened. User growth stalled at around 90 million registered users, but paid conversion and expansion revenue slowed sharply.

Second, competition became brutal. Figma launched FigJam as a free bundled alternative, Microsoft pushed Whiteboard and Loop inside Teams and Microsoft 365 for free, while Lucidchart, Mural, and a wave of AI-native canvas startups undercut Miro on price. What was once a must-have $10-per-user tool became a nice-to-have squeezed by bundle economics.

Third, the funding environment changed. With interest rates higher for longer and late-stage investors demanding a path to profitability, Miro was forced to cut burn. It conducted at least three rounds of layoffs in 2023 and 2024, shedding more than 700 employees, shuttered offices, and shifted focus from hypergrowth to enterprise efficiency. Growth reportedly slowed to single digits in 2025, making an IPO at its old valuation impossible and a down-round or sale inevitable.

Sources close to the company say Miro had been quietly exploring strategic options since late 2025, holding talks with private equity firms and strategic buyers including Atlassian and Salesforce before Bending Spoons emerged with the winning bid.

Inside Bending Spoons' Buy-and-Fix Empire

For Bending Spoons, this is business as usual — and that's exactly the point.

The Milan-based company, founded in 2013 and led by CEO Luca Ferrari, has built a reputation as the serial acquirer of tired internet brands. Since 2022, it has snapped up Evernote, Meetup, StreamYard, WeTransfer, and most notably Vimeo for $1.38 billion in 2025.

Its formula is ruthless and repeatable: buy a well-known product with a large user base but bloated costs and slowing growth, move engineering to Italy, cut 70-80% of staff, raise prices, kill free perks, and rebuild for lean profitability.

Critics call it strip-mining. Bending Spoons calls it sustainable software craftsmanship. Investors are betting on the latter — the company raised over $800 million in debt and equity in 2024-2025 at a valuation north of $10 billion, backed by Durable Capital, Baillie Gifford, and Cox Enterprises.

Miro fits the playbook perfectly: beloved brand, 250,000+ paying enterprise customers including Nike, Netflix, and Toyota, massive name recognition, but heavy losses and a valuation no traditional VC could justify anymore.

In a statement, Ferrari said Miro is a "once-in-a-generation canvas for innovation" and promised long-term investment, while hinting at the usual efficiency overhaul to make Miro "profitable and enduring for decades to come."

What This Means for Miro Users and Employees

If history is any guide, big changes are coming for Miro's 1,000-plus employees and its millions of users.

Employees are bracing for deep cuts. After its Vimeo and WeTransfer deals, Bending Spoons laid off the majority of US-based staff within months and centralized product development in Milan. Miro's hubs in Amsterdam, Austin, and San Francisco are likely to face the same review.

For users, expect pricing changes. Bending Spoons typically tightens free plans, cracks down on multi-account enterprise usage, and pushes annual bundles. Evernote users saw free tiers limited to 50 notes; WeTransfer's free transfer limit was slashed from 2GB to 1GB. Miro's generous free plan with three editable boards could be next on the chopping block.

On the product side, Bending Spoons has promised AI investment. Expect tighter AI summarization, automated diagramming, and enterprise security features aimed at justifying higher per-seat prices — and competing directly with Atlassian's Loom and Figma's AI canvas.

Miro CEO Jeff Chow, who took over from co-founder Andrey Khusid in 2023, will reportedly stay on through the transition before departing. Khusid, still Miro's largest individual shareholder, backed the sale as "the best path to scale Miro to a billion users."

The End of the Whiteboard Boom — and the Future of Collaboration

Miro's fire sale is more than one company's misfortune. It's the final verdict on an entire era of collaboration software.

The 2020-2021 thesis was simple: remote work is forever, and every team needs a standalone app for docs, chat, video, and whiteboarding. Investors paid 50-100x ARR for that vision.

The 2026 reality is consolidation. Microsoft and Google give away collaboration for free to lock in cloud contracts. Figma and Canva bundle whiteboards to win design workflows. AI agents that auto-generate user journeys, retros, and product specs are replacing manual sticky notes.

Standalone whiteboards can't survive alone. That's why Bending Spoons is betting it can roll Miro into a profitable bundle alongside WeTransfer, Vimeo, and Evernote for creative teams — a sort of anti-Adobe suite for visual work.

Whether that works remains to be seen. But one thing is clear: the days of $17.5 billion valuations for a digital whiteboard are over. Miro's journey from decacorn to distressed asset is a cautionary tale for every pandemic unicorn still waiting for 2021 prices to come back. They won't.

AndroGuider Team

Articles written by the AndroGuider team. We try to make them thorough and informational while being easy to read.