The Cogit AI AIRI dossier for Forbes Italia captures one of the most curious asymmetries of contemporary tech capitalism.
On the one hand, we have a company that is extraordinarily efficient operationally and commercially. On the other, that very same company is simultaneously perceived as alien by the millions of people who use its products every day.
How is this possible? And what is causing it?
The AI Reputation Index gives Bending Spoons an overall score of 69.5 out of 100. Note, though, that this result is an average. Across the specific areas, the scores are: 88 on the financial and investor dimension, 72 on the strategic dimension, 42 on the relationship with users.
The same company that debuted on the Nasdaq at a valuation of $18.4 billion, closed 2025 with $1.31 billion in revenue (+95% on the previous year) and generates $2.57 million in revenue per employee, records the lowest reputation score in its relationship with the people who use its products.
Just don’t call it a contradiction.
It is simply a snapshot of its model. For better or worse.
How the Bending Spoons model works
Bending Spoons buys products for their potential revenue structure, which can be optimised through automation.
In essence, then, what it does is buy software with an already solid user base, cut its operating costs, use AI to implement every process and optimise monetisation.
It follows, however, that the community that matters is not built but inherited.
AOL, Eventbrite, Evernote, Remini, StreamYard, Vimeo, WeTransfer. Before their acquisition, almost all of these products had one thing in common: loyal user communities, built up over years. Communities that, however, have no connection whatsoever with Bending Spoons.
42 out of 100 is, if anything, generous
We are talking about path dependence.
A user who has built up years of notes on Evernote, videos on Vimeo and transfers on WeTransfer obviously faces a cost of leaving that is far, far higher than their dissatisfaction.
A die-hard fan of one of these platforms will keep using it. And the data confirm it: 400 million monthly active users, 7 million paying customers. A poor reputation among the consumer base can sit perfectly well alongside the market figures, because the switching cost will outweigh the discomfort anyway.
Bending Spoons manages 1,031 potential acquisition targets with estimated aggregate revenues of nearly $400 billion. The model is industrial. And so, therefore, is the approach.
A user-trust score of 42 does not put this model in crisis as long as path dependence is stronger than dissatisfaction. The risk could materialise the moment a competitor lowers the switching cost enough to make leaving worthwhile. Going by the numbers, that does not yet seem to be happening.
The gap between financial reputation and user trust
Yet the Cogit AI dossier identifies this gap as the model’s main risk.
Investors reward efficiency, speed of acquisition, operating margin and revenue growth. Metrics in which Bending Spoons excels. But the value a user places on the product experience over time, the sense of being listened to and the consistency of the product’s identity do not appear. And that does not mean they will have no impact.
Every company that optimises its cost structure without safeguarding the experience users perceive runs the same risk. At Bending Spoons it is visible because the scale is enormous: any organisation, however, is at risk.
Financial reputation and user trust measure two different things. The first speaks of value extraction; the second, of value creation.
Perhaps the two can coexist for a while. But it is always the latter that determines whether the former is sustainable.
What Bending Spoons teaches those who govern a brand
Even if the Bending Spoons model cannot be replicated, it has much to teach us in the way it makes visible a tension that remains hidden in most organisations.
Every company that acquires another, every brand that changes its pricing model, every product optimised for margin without safeguarding the user experience, finds itself in a smaller version of the same dynamic. The difference is one of scale, nothing more.
Bending Spoons has built a system that monetises the path dependency of the users of the products it acquires. A deliberate choice, and one that is paying off now. Tomorrow? Who knows.
New Connections (FAQ)
Is a user-trust score of 42 really a problem for Bending Spoons, given its financial results?
Not in the short term, and the data prove it: 400 million monthly active users, 7 million paying customers, revenue growth of 95% in a year. The risk is not immediate because the cost of abandoning the portfolio’s products is high: years of data on Evernote, videos on Vimeo and transfers on WeTransfer create a dependency that outweighs dissatisfaction. The risk materialises when the competition lowers that cost. In the software sector, this happens regularly.
Is the acquire-and-optimise model a brand governance choice or merely a financial strategy?
It is both, but the two dimensions are managed separately. Bending Spoons oversees its own reputation with great care: as an organisation, as an employer brand and as a counterpart for investors. The brands of the individual products it acquires, by contrast, it manages as financial assets to be optimised. The consequence is that Bending Spoons as an entity enjoys a very high reputation among investors and talent, while the brands it manages have reputations that are eroding among their long-standing users. The two coexist as long as the value extracted from the acquired brands exceeds the cost of that erosion.
What should an organisation that acquires products with established user bases do differently?
The critical variable is the speed and visibility of change. Users of an acquired product accept change if they perceive a direction consistent with the values of the original product. They respond by leaving when they perceive that the product they loved has been replaced by something different without anyone considering them in the process. Safeguarding the acquired product’s identity, maintaining consistency with what users had found in it, and communicating changes as evolution rather than replacement reduces the risk without necessarily reducing the margin.
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