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As part of the acquisition, Brightcove will go private, having gone public on the Nasdaq in 2012.
Milan-based tech company Bending Spoons is set to acquire US video platform Brightcove in an all-cash deal valued at $233m.
Under the terms of the agreement, Brightcove shareholders will receive $4.45 per share in cash for each share of common stock that they own.
Founded in Boston in 2004, Brightcove develops tech to create, host, stream and monetise video content and has won two technology and engineering Emmy Awards.
Bending Spoons is an Italian app developer that has been making some notable acquisitions this year, including Meetup and WeTransfer. The company itself surged to $2.5bn in valuation after raising $155m in February.
As part of the acquisition, Brightcove will go private, having gone public on the Nasdaq in 2012.
Luca Ferrari, CEO and co-founder of Bending Spoons, said Brightcove is “a trusted and respected name” in the video streaming space.
“When Bending Spoons acquires a business, we do so with the intention of owning and operating it indefinitely. With this in mind, we’re excited about building on the strong work of the current team, and ensuring Brightcove thrives for many years to come,” he said.
Marc DeBevoise, Brightcove’s CEO and board director, said the acquisition will “enable Brightcove to leverage the technology and market expertise of Bending Spoons” and allow Brightcove to continue to thrive.
As well as Meetup and WeTransfer, Bending Spoons also snapped up popular note-taking and task management app Evernote in 2022. At the time, Evernote’s CEO Ian Small said the acquisition would speed up the company’s journey in delivering improvements to its customers.
Less than a year after the acquisition was announced, Evernote said it planned to transition most of its operations to Europe, laying off most of its Chile and US-based employees.
And while the acquisition of WeTransfer was announced in July of this year, it transpired that the file-sharing company would lose 75pc of its staff.
At the time, Ferrari said that it was the right thing to do to help the business thrive. “In this particular case, the vision we developed is of a smaller, more sharply focused WeTransfer organisation, which we believe will be better positioned to serve WeTransfer’s success with a long-term view,” he said.
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