Miro was profitable, had $435m in the bank, and sold at 2.3 times revenue
Bending Spoons signed Airtable on 4 August, closed it on 4 September and signed Miro on 10 September: $2.64bn of 2021-vintage software in thirty-seven days.
Miro did not need the money. It was profitable, held most of half a billion dollars in net cash, and sold anyway.
Bending Spoons signed a definitive agreement on 10 September 2026 to buy the whiteboard company at a $1.355 billion enterprise value, or $1.79 billion to shareholders once the cash is counted. Every outlet led with the fall from $17.5 billion in January 2022. Here is the figure nobody ran: against roughly $600 million of annual recurring revenue, 90 percent of it from businesses, the sale price is about 2.3 times revenue.
That is what the market pays for a declining business. Miro is not obviously declining. It has nearly 4 million paying users, and founder Andrey Khusid's note to staff walks through both halves of the price himself, which is more candour than most sellers offer. The awkward arithmetic between them is not in the note.
Look at the buyer's calendar instead
On 28 July, Bending Spoons entered a €500 million state-backed term loan facility. On 4 August it agreed to buy Airtable, a company worth more than $11 billion in 2021, for $1.285 billion. That deal closed on 4 September. Miro signed six days later.
Thirty-seven days, one credit facility, and $2.64 billion of enterprise value across two of the most celebrated software companies of the last cycle. The acquirer claims more than a billion registered users across a portfolio that already holds AOL, Evernote, Eventbrite, Vimeo and WeTransfer.
Bending Spoons is not opportunistically picking up distressed assets. It is running a programme, and the supply is 2021.
Why a board says yes at that price
Because the cap table needs the cash more than the company does. Eric Newcomer republished his own reporting on the day of the deal.
"ICONIQ backed up the truck, investing $570 million in Miro across its fourth, fifth, and sixth fund. ICONIQ led a funding round that was announced in January 2022 that valued the company at $17.5 billion post-money. The firm owns 16.2% of Miro, according to the presentation."
from @NewcomerMedia in 2022 on ICONIQ t.co/ddLVnKfbZT
If ICONIQ still holds something close to that stake, its share of the equity value is roughly half what it put in. A fund carrying an illiquid early-2022 mark for four and a half years, with limited partners asking about distributions, will probably take cash at half. You would too. A founder will not fight a board that wants it. And there is no public listing available to a collaboration tool of this size competing with Figma, Canva and Microsoft, so the alternative to this price is this price in 2028.
That is our read on the question TechCrunch asked and left open.
The case against reading it that way is fair. Two and a bit times revenue may simply be correct for a category that AI canvases are eating. Khusid notes that Bending Spoons has never sold a material business it acquired, which is worth something to a customer choosing a whiteboard for the next five years. And Miro raised $476 million in total, so the price clears the preference stack and the early investors are fine.
Employees who took options after 2021 are not. That part is not arguable.
So what would you expect next? We would expect another Bending Spoons deal for a 2021-vintage software company at under three times recurring revenue signed before the end of March 2027, and Miro list prices to rise within a year of closing, which is the pattern at Evernote, WeTransfer and Vimeo. A quarter with no deal, or a price freeze, and we have misread the machine.
The deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter, subject to regulatory approval.
