The Company Squeezing Money From Apps You Used to Love

There's a company you've probably never heard of that now owns Evernote, Meetup, Vimeo, and AOL. Yes, that AOL. The company is called Bending Spoons, and what all of these have in common is that they're well-known products that are well past their prime.

Every time Bending Spoons acquires something, the same headlines follow: mass layoffs, price hikes, angry users. But I got curious. What do the numbers actually look like after Bending Spoons takes over?

I pulled the data on some of their most popular acquisitions using Appfigures Intelligence to find out.

What the Data Shows

Evernote is probably the most well-known Bending Spoons acquisition. They bought it in early 2023, and within six months the entire staff was laid off and the company relocated to Europe.

Our estimates show that in the six months before the acquisition, Evernote was averaging about $1.5M per month in net revenue with about 254K monthly downloads. In the most recent six months, revenue averaged $2.1M per month while downloads dropped to about 92K. Revenue up 39%, downloads down 64%. How? Pricing has roughly tripled since the acquisition, and in November 2025 they introduced storage limits for the first time in Evernote's history, pushing power users to a $250 per year Advanced tier.

Meetup, the events platform, is another interesting one. Before the acquisition in early 2024, mobile net revenue was about $55K per month, according to our App Intelligence. For the first ten months after the acquisition, not much changed. Revenue stayed in the $40K to $60K range. Then in November 2024, price hikes started hitting organizer renewal cycles, and revenue jumped. By January 2026, it reached $291K per month even though downloads barely moved the entire time.

Robokiller, the spam call blocker they picked up through the Mosaic Group acquisition in early 2024, is a quieter story. Downloads dropped from about 115K per month to 45K, according to our estimates. Revenue held steady at around $2M per month the entire time. Just a smaller user base generating the same revenue "thanks" to price hikes.

WeTransfer is a different kind of acquisition. Unlike the others, WeTransfer wasn't a has-been. It was already growing when Bending Spoons acquired it in July 2024 and cut 75% of the staff by September. In the acquisition month, the mobile app was pulling about $830K per month in estimated net revenue. By January 2026, it hit $4.6M. Revenue was already climbing before the acquisition, but the pace accelerated dramatically after. Downloads stayed roughly flat the entire time.

Vimeo is the newest and biggest acquisition at $1.4B, completed in late 2025. It's too early to see revenue changes in the data, but as you'd expect, layoffs hit in January, similar to what happened at WeTransfer.

Bending Spoons' results vary. WeTransfer's revenue surged. Evernote's crept up. Robokiller's held flat. But the approach is consistent: take over, cut costs, raise prices, and ride an unhappy user base.

What Users Think

There's mostly negative sentiment in the press about Bending Spoons' acquisitions, but what do users think? It looks like they're continue to pay...

So I looked at reviews across these apps and things were not looking great. Evernote's average star rating from recent reviews is just 1.34 out of 5. 80% are one-star reviews, and here's the kicker - these reviews aren't from the acquisition three years ago, they're from this week.

• "Was one of the original users when the app was free and good. They've now held 20 years of my free notes hostage for $26 a month." Card
• "Aggressive paywalls and unskippable adds - I feel that my own data is being held hostage." Card
• "After using Evernote for what must be decades, I now must look for an alternative." Card

Meetup isn't far behind with a 2.06 average.

• "Since the buyout this app has gone way downhill. We need an alternative ASAP." Card
• "Insane prices. Do you think this will work in future?" Card
• "lol what’s this price. - 10 euro a week is insane lol" Card

These repeat again and again and again.

I did notice an interesting pattern. Evernote's users are most angry because unlike other apps, they can't just walk away. If you don't like a call blocker, you delete it and move on. But 10 years of notes are hard to leave behind and Bending Spoons knows it.

That has to be a part of this playbook.

And Then There's Remini

Bending Spoons' first acquisition was Remini, an AI photo enhancer they picked up from a Chinese developer in mid-2021 which doesn't fit the playbook at all.

Remini wasn't a has-been. It was a small app that caught a massive wave. When the AI photo trend exploded in mid-2023, downloads spiked to 23M in a single month. The hype faded, and downloads settled back to around 7M but revenue didn't come down. We estimate that Remini earned $7.5M in net revenue in January. More than 10 times what it was making in early 2022.

Bending Spoons didn't gut Remini. They invested in it, added features, and rode the AI wave with it. Remini is now running at a $93M annual pace (after store fees).

That's almost as much as Evernote, WeTransfer, Meetup, and Robokiller combined!

Whether that was deliberate strategy or just good timing, Remini is the engine that funds everything else.

The Bigger Picture

Bending Spoons isn't slowing down. They paid $1.4B for Vimeo and $1.5B for AOL. That's a company most people have never heard of casually spending billions on brands everyone knows.

The targets tend to fit the same profile. A well-known brand, past its peak, with users who are loyal but not growing. Products that most investors would look at and see decline.

Users aren't happy about the changes but the revenue data shows the model is working. And as long as it does, I'd expect Bending Spoons to keep buying.

Can you guess their next target?

App Intelligence for Everyone!

The insights in this report come right out of our App Intelligence platform, which offers access to download and revenue estimates, installed SDKs, and more! Learn more about the tools or schedule a demo with our team to get started.

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All figures included in this report are estimated. Unless specified otherwise, estimated revenue is always net, meaning it's the amount the developer earned after Apple and Google took their fee.