Bending Spoons buys Miro for $1.355 billion, 92% below peak

Bending Spoons agreed on September 10 to buy Miro at a $1.355 billion enterprise value, close to $1.79 billion in equity once you count Miro's net cash, per Bending Spoons' deal announcement. The deal is all cash, though some Miro shareholders are rolling $295 million into new Bending Spoons stock instead of taking the payout.

Miro isn't a struggling company picked up out of necessity. It has about $600 million in annual recurring revenue, nearly 90% of it from business and enterprise accounts, and 250,000 organizations paying for it. It was profitable and cash-positive at the time of the sale. None of that stopped the price from settling at roughly 2x ARR, a fraction of the $17.5 billion valuation Miro carried in its 2021 funding round.

That 92% gap between peak valuation and sale price says something about what a category-defining 2021 startup is worth once its growth curve flattens. This isn't a distressed-asset story. It's what happens when a collaboration tool from the 2021 funding cycle has to compete with entrenched productivity suites and a wave of AI-native alternatives for the same budget line.

Bending Spoons closed its Airtable acquisition at a similar multiple one week earlier. Two deals, two different products, the same rough math on what mature SaaS is worth once growth levels off. Profitable, well-adopted software from the last funding boom is trading near revenue, not near its old growth multiple.

The announcement doesn't say what Bending Spoons plans to do with Miro's product roadmap or where AI features fit into its pitch to the 250,000 existing customers. For companies still holding 2021-era valuations on their cap tables, this is now a real comparable.