Bending Spoons will acquire Miro for $1.36 billion in cash, a deal that strips the collaboration startup of most of its pandemic-era value and hands the Italian acquirer a mature product with established revenue.
The purchase price implies an equity value of $1.79 billion, down sharply from Miro's $17.5 billion valuation in late 2021. Miro built its position as a digital whiteboard during the early pandemic surge, expanding integrations to more than 250 apps and partnering with Atlassian, Cisco, Microsoft and Zoom. The company now markets itself with AI features including assistants, workflows, prototyping tools and connectors that pull context from platforms such as GitHub, Jira and Slack.
Growth since the boom has slowed but the business remains sizable. Miro reports more than 4 million paying users and 100 million total users. Bending Spoons said the company generates about $600 million in annual recurring revenue, with 90% of that coming from business and enterprise customers. The startup also has roughly $435 million in net cash and is profitable.
Still, the deal highlights how much SaaS multiples have contracted since 2021, when customers and investors rewarded rapid user and revenue expansion. Miro grew from 5 million to about 30 million users in a two-year span and increased its paying customer base by 550%, gains that contributed to its peak valuation. The company later trimmed headcount, reporting about 1,200 employees in 2022, then cutting 119 roles in February 2023 and reportedly 275 more in October 2024.
Bending Spoons has pursued a pattern of buying well-known SaaS businesses at deep discounts; last month it bought Airtable for $1.28 billion, after that company had been priced at over $11 billion in 2021. The Italian acquirer appears to be buying slower-growing but profitable software franchises for fractions of their boom valuations.
The transaction leaves unanswered why Miro's board and investors chose to sell now despite the company's cash position and profitability, and it revives questions about whether the window for public market exits or comparable private sales for 2021-priced SaaS companies has narrowed substantially.
