Bending Spoons cuts most of Airtable's staff weeks after $1.3 billion buyout

Bending Spoons, the Milan-based technology conglomerate that closed its acquisition of Airtable on September 4, laid off most of Airtable's pre-acquisition San Francisco workforce on October 12 and 13. The company has not disclosed an exact headcount or percentage, but Airtable employed roughly 800 people in San Francisco before the deal, and executives described the cuts internally as affecting the majority of that team.

Alessandro Savarese, who joined Airtable in September to lead product development, told staff the company is "parting ways with a large portion of the pre-acquisition team," framing the move as a shift toward smaller, faster-moving groups rather than a verdict on anyone's work. Affected employees are leaving with what the company calls substantial separation packages, and many of their in-flight projects are expected to continue under remaining staff.

To everyone leaving: thank you. If you're hiring, these are excellent people and worth a call.

That line came from Federico Simionato, Bending Spoons' product leader, in a post explaining the cuts. He argued the company's "deep belief that smaller teams achieve more and produce better outcomes" was driving the restructuring, not employee performance. Airtable says it will now concentrate investment in its core platform, enterprise controls and AI-native features, including an upgraded version of its Omni AI assistant and new bring-your-own-agent options.

A familiar playbook, now labeled AI

Bending Spoons has run the same sequence on nearly every company it has bought. Evernote lost its entire U.S. and Chile-based staff within months of being acquired in 2023. WeTransfer, Komoot and Mosaic Group each saw cuts in the 75-to-100 percent range shortly after their deals closed. Vimeo's entire video team was let go in a mass layoff in January, and more than 100 AOL staff were cut in February. Airtable is the pattern's first application since Bending Spoons went public on Nasdaq in July at an $18.4 billion valuation, and the company has a $1.36 billion deal to acquire Miro pending — suggesting the same acquire-then-shrink approach, now explicitly framed around AI tooling rather than just cost-cutting, is about to repeat again.

What distinguishes this instance from Bending Spoons' earlier deals is that Airtable was not struggling. The company reported about $480 million in annual recurring revenue, growing more than 20% year over year, with 500,000 organizations as customers including 80% of the Fortune 100. The $1.285 billion enterprise value Bending Spoons paid is roughly 89% below Airtable's $11.7 billion peak valuation from its 2021 Series F, reflecting a broader markdown in how growth-stage software companies get priced rather than any operating distress. That a financially healthy, growing company is still having most of its pre-acquisition staff cut, with AI investment cited as the rationale, is the clearest signal yet that AI-native reorganization is becoming boilerplate justification for headcount reduction even absent a business downturn.