The whiteboard startup era has come to an abrupt close. Bending Spoons, the Milan-based owner of a growing portfolio of consumer software brands, has agreed to acquire Miro for roughly $1.36 billion, a price that sits nearly 90 percent below the $17.5 billion valuation the collaborative whiteboard platform commanded at the height of the pandemic remote-work boom in 2022. The deal marks one of the steepest markdowns ever recorded for a once-hot enterprise collaboration unicorn and underscores how dramatically the market has repriced tools that were supposed to define the future of work.
Miro rose to fame during lockdowns, when distributed teams flocked to its infinite digital canvas for brainstorming, diagramming, and agile planning. Venture backers poured capital into the company on the assumption that virtual whiteboards would become as fundamental as email. That thesis collapsed quickly once offices reopened and generative AI shifted enterprise budgets toward automation rather than collaboration surfaces. The company subsequently cut staff, reshuffled leadership, and repositioned itself around AI-assisted workflows in a bid to stabilize revenue before entertaining an exit.
For Bending Spoons, the acquisition fits a well-practiced playbook: buy recognizable software assets at depressed valuations, then apply ruthless operational discipline and subscription optimization to squeeze durable cash flow from them. The company, backed by KKR and Permira, has previously reshaped properties such as Evernote, Meetup, and WeTransfer. Analysts note that the transaction also signals a broader consolidation wave, as financially strong operators harvest discounted growth brands while venture-backed founders and investors reluctantly accept that the era of mega-round valuations has ended.
