US billionaire Warren Buffett’s Berkshire adds $330m bet

Berkshire Hathaway, the conglomerate American billionaire Warren Buffett built over six decades, is investing another $330 million in Bending Spoons, the Milan-based technology group that owns AOL, Evernote and Vimeo, raising its stake to 4%.

Bending Spoons said on Wednesday that it will issue 10 million new ordinary shares to Berkshire at $33 each in a private placement. The deal is subject to customary closing conditions, and the company said further details would be filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

The new money comes on top of the $600 million Berkshire put into Bending Spoons at its initial public offering in July, bringing its total investment to nearly $930 million, according to Benzinga. Berkshire becomes the sixth-largest investor in the company, Reuters reported, citing LSEG data.

Bending Spoons shares jumped on the news. The shares, which trade on the Nasdaq under the ticker BSP, were up 48.8% at $56.33 on Wednesday, according to Benzinga. The stock had closed at $37.86 on Tuesday, which means Berkshire is paying nearly 13% less than that price for its new shares.

A deal in the Abel era

The investment comes under Greg Abel, who succeeded Buffett as Berkshire’s chief executive officer at the start of 2026. Buffett, 96, remains chairman. Neither company said which Berkshire executive approved the purchase, and Billionaires.Africa could not find a public comment from Berkshire on the deal.

Bending Spoons co-founder and CEO Luca Ferrari welcomed the new commitment. “We were delighted to welcome Berkshire Hathaway as shareholders at our public listing,” he said in a statement, describing the Omaha, Nebraska-based company as “among the finest and most respected capital allocators in the world.”

Ferrari has compared his company to Buffett’s before. When Bending Spoons went public in July, he described it to Forbes as “the best of both worlds of Berkshire Hathaway and a technology company.”

The fresh capital is meant to fund more deals. “Bending Spoons continuously evaluates M&A opportunities, and our pipeline remains strong,” said Francesco Patarnello, a co-founder who heads business acquisitions. He said the investment would add to the company’s financial flexibility for acquisitions.

Buying fading internet brands

Bending Spoons was founded in Italy by Ferrari, Patarnello, Matteo Danieli and Luca Querella. It has built its business by buying established apps and websites whose growth has stalled, cutting costs and reworking their products. It says it has never sold a material business.

The company has bought more than 50 businesses, according to Forbes. They include AOL, which it bought for $1.45 billion in 2025, and Evernote, which cost $200 million in 2023. Its main businesses also include Airtable, Brightcove, Eventbrite, Tractive, Vimeo and WeTransfer. It completed the Airtable acquisition on Sept. 4, and on Sept. 10 agreed to buy Miro, a provider of online collaboration software, for $1.355 billion.

Bending Spoons raised $1.7 billion in its Nasdaq listing in July, the largest listing by a European startup since 2023, according to Forbes. The offering valued the company at $18.4 billion, up from $14 billion in a private funding round in October 2025. The four co-founders’ combined stake was worth $8.9 billion at the listing.

The company had $793 million in cash and cash equivalents and $1.28 billion in available revolving credit at the end of June, Benzinga reported.

The investment is small next to Berkshire’s cash pile. The conglomerate reported in August that its cash, cash equivalents and short-term U.S. Treasury bills stood at nearly $360 billion at the end of June, down from nearly $391 billion at the end of March.