Bending Spoons to Buy Airtable for $1.3 Billion

Ivan Mehta, reporting for TechCrunch: In its first acquisition since going public last month, Bending Spoons on Tuesday said that it has agreed to buy spreadsheet and database startup Airtable for $1.28 billion in cash. Founded in 2013, Airtable has so far raised over $1.4 billion over multiple funding rounds. At its peak, during the boom days of 2021, it was valued at over $11 billion, but earlier this year, its shares were said to be trading on the secondary markets at a valuation of $4 billion. With its current net cash-and-cash-equivalents balance, Airtable is now valued at about $2.25 billion, Bending Spoons said. The problem isn’t that Airtable isn’t good product with a good business. According to the announcement, Airtable’s revenue is up to $480 million/year and grew 20 percent year-over-year. That’s good. That’s just not $11-billion-valuation good. In the abstract building a company worth $1 billion is a success; it’s a problem, though, if its financials are such that it needs to justify a valuation an order of magnitude greater than what it’s actually worth.  ★