Airtable’s valuation plummeted from $11.7bn in 2021 after generative AI exploded onto the scene.

Italy’s Bending Spoons has agreed to buy US automation company Airtable at an implied equity value of around $2.25bn in its first acquisition deal since going public last month. The all-cash deal is for an enterprise value of $1.28bn.

Founded in 2013 – well before the explosive popularity of generative AI – Airtable enables teams to build custom applications without code or engineering. The company said its platform is used by more than 500,000 organisations, including “80pc of the Fortune 100”.

The software start-up was valued at $11.7bn following a $735m funding round in 2021, which brought the business up to profitability for the first time. Company CEO Howie Liu said, at the time, that Airtable intended to go public in a few years.

However, the advent of tools such as ChatGPT and Claude have clawed back Airtable’s market share by providing similar and more advanced capabilities. Still, Airtable has managed an annual recurring revenue growth of more than 20pc year-over-year to approximately $480m as of June this year, the company said.

“Partnering with Bending Spoons gives us the resources and the long-term commitment Airtable needs to pursue [our] vision even more boldly as we build the AI-native platform of the future,” said Liu, in a joint statement with Bending Spoons announcing the acquisition.

Bending Spoons, led by Matteo Danieli, Luca Ferrari, Francesco Patarnello and Luca Querella, acquires and revamps struggling digital businesses. Its portfolio of more than 50 companies includes Evernote, WeTransfer, Eventbrite and AOL.

The company’s recent public listing raised around $1.68bn at a rough $18.4bn valuation at a time when investor attention is largely turned to AI. In a recent government filing, Bending Spoons said that it had identified more than 1,000 businesses as potential acquisition targets for the future.

“We’re committed to investing in Airtable for the long run, and doubling down on its core strength: bringing teams and workflows together in one flexible workspace,” said Ferrari. “We plan to expand what can be done across the full spectrum of work and make Airtable even more valuable to customers at every scale.”

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