Content Creation Consolidation: Bending Spoons Strikes Again
There are a few tools that many streaming pros have used through the years, from WeTransfer to Brightcove to Vimeo. Some are essential to content creation, OTT delivery, and live streaming. All of these tools have one important thing in common now: their recent acquisition by the Italian company Bending Spoons.
What does it mean to be acquired? One the one hand, after Bending Spoons acquired WeTransfer, it cut staff by 75%. On the other hand, Brightcove shares were up 34% after acquisition, and consolidation of complementary systems can benefit overall workflows.
In addition to these streaming-specific acquisitions, Bending Spoons has acquired Komoot, a platform for planning customized vacations. It also snapped up Issuu, a “digital publishing and discovery platform” that has a tool called Clip, which takes a snapshot of an online publication for sharing on social media. The list also includes MileIQ, which makes mileage-tracking software, and Evernote, which keeps track of notes and ideas. In addition, Bending Spoons acquired Remini in 2021 and Meetup in 2024. And here’s the whopper: Yahoo is said to be near a deal to sell the media brand and portal AOL to Bending Spoons. AOL itself owns LifeLock, LastPass, and McAfee, among other assets. I have to ask: What does this all have to do with media management and OTT distribution tools?
Are the tools that we producers use in our everyday work being entrusted to a company that understands our needs and goals? Per its own website, Bending Spoons is a technology company that “owns and operates leading digital products.” This is quite a different mission statement from, say, the one from Videndum (formerly The Vitec Group), which owns more than nearly 2 dozen companies involved in the production space and considers itself “a leading global provider of premium branded hardware products and software solutions to the growing content creation market." That’s on point, and all of the companies Videndum owns are in that channel. It makes sense.
If Videndum had suddenly acquired Fitbit, LinkedIn, or GasBuddy, you’d probably wonder what the heck is going on. But it hasn’t.
As someone who has used WeTransfer, Brightcove, and Vimeo, I find it unsettling to see them sit alongside mileage-tracking and (checks notes) customized vacation planning. Hacker News notes that Bending Spoons laid off more than 85% of the Brightcove staff. Vimeo was not hit as hard, laying off only 10% of staff in early September 2025.
Reports talk about making these companies “leaner” and “more commercial.” Does this also mean that costs will go up? Will the features these tools and services have be cut? Will investments in these companies also be trimmed? It’s really hard to know what the future holds because Bending Spoons has not made any announcements about its plans for these acquisitions to make its intentions clearer.
But if the consolidation at the top of the studios is any indication, with the recent merger of Skydance and Paramount, Amazon acquiring MGM, and Netflix and Paramount Skydance going after Warner Bros. Discovery, maybe The Mandalorian’s motto applies: “This is the way.” I don’t know why these companies feel the need to constantly merge and acquire, but that seems to be the rule of the day. What does it mean for producers who rely on these tools, especially when the company acquiring them does not have a production focus like Videndum?
For me, it means that I’ll be wary. I’ll keep my Vimeo account, but I’ll also start looking at other solutions that can perform similar tasks in case Bending Spoons decides to morph Vimeo into something else “more commercial” that breaks or eliminates the functionality I need.
We don’t know what the future holds, but as with climate change breaking up the Arctic ice we used to know as one big mass, tectonic shifts are happening, and there’s no going back. We need to keep our eyes and ears open so we can understand what’s going on, make adjustments in advance, and not be caught unaware.
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