What an ending. Airtable, valued at $11 billion in 2021 after a trio of funding rounds in under two years, is being acquired by Italian conglomerate Bending Spoons for just $1.285 billion in cash, the companies said on Tuesday. The price tag for the once-hot productivity app seems like a blow to shareholders, particularly those like hedge fund XN, Thrive Capital and Greenoaks Capital that led its last rounds. And the price, amounting to less than three times annualized revenue, should lower expectations for future sales of enterprise software startups (Airtable was No. 2 on our recent list of such targets.) But there’s more to this deal than meets the eye. Alongside the deal price, Airtable also has around $900 million in cash on its balance sheet that can be distributed to its preferred stockholders. What’s left goes to its common shareholders, according to people with knowledge of the deal. That’s in part due to Airtable CEO Howie Liu’s energetic fundraising, which brought in $1.3 billion over the company’s 14-year history.
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What an ending. Airtable, valued at $11 billion in 2021 after a trio of funding rounds in under two years, is being acquired by Italian conglomerate Bending Spoons for just $1.285 billion in cash, the companies said on Tuesday. The price tag for the once-hot productivity app seems like a blow to shareholders, particularly those like hedge fund XN, Thrive Capital and Greenoaks Capital that led its last rounds. And the price, amounting to less than three times annualized revenue, should lower expectations for future sales of enterprise software startups (Airtable was No. 2 on our recent list of such targets.)
But there’s more to this deal than meets the eye. Alongside the deal price, Airtable also has around $900 million in cash on its balance sheet that can be distributed to its preferred stockholders. What’s left goes to its common shareholders, according to people with knowledge of the deal. That’s in part due to Airtable CEO Howie Liu’s energetic fundraising, which brought in $1.3 billion over the company’s 14-year history.
As a result, many shareholders should at least get back the money they invested, the people said. Earlier investors, such as CRV and Caffeinated Capital, should get a sizable return.
There’s more. Bending Spoons is not buying all of Airtable. Six months ago, Airtable launched HyperAgent, its platform for building and deploying AI agents. Just a few days before selling to Bending Spoons, Airtable spun off HyperAgent to a standalone company called HyperAgent Inc., according to an SEC filing and people with knowledge of the deal.
Airtable investors will get a stake in HyperAgent, according to the people, though the exact structure, including cost, couldn’t be learned. Liu has also told investors that the new HyperAgent startup will be able to raise its own funding and he plans to run it full-time after the Bending Spoons deal closes, said a person with knowledge of the communications.
Of course, just getting the investment back isn’t a great return for later investors. Buying the S&P 500 in September 2020 would have doubled investors’ money. And common stock holders fared worse. Investors who bought common stock in a small secondary transaction in 2021, valued between $5.5 billion and $11 billion, lost money, according to a person with direct knowledge of the situation. “It’s venture; it happens,” the person said.
And while employees are getting some money to account for their equity, the sale price is likely a disappointment.
Bain Capital Ventures partner Aaref Hilaly estimates there is about $850 million for common shareholders in the deal. If the founders own about 20%, there should be about $127 million left for about 900 employees.
“Common shareholders should get something from this, just nowhere near what they were hoping for,” he said on The Information’s TITV streaming show Thursday. He noted the company had been valued at $4 billion recently on secondary-market exchanges.
Spokespeople for Airtable and Bending Spoons didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Airtable’s reorganization and sale could prove to be a turning point for privately held enterprise software startups. Almost since the last tech bubble collapsed in 2022, venture capitalists have been wrestling with what to do with portfolios full of software startups whose valuations looked far too high given the sell-off in public peers.
Mounting competition from AI apps further worsened the outlook for many, slowing revenue growth and pushing founders to hastily remake their startups as AI companies. Airtable’s sale shows one path to the finish line: A deeply discounted price and a fresh start as an AI company.
Today on TITV
Check out today's episode of TITV in which we discuss the details of Bending Spoons’ acquisition of Airtable and the future of enterprise software.
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