Airtable’s valuation plummeted from $11.7bn in 2021 after generative AI exploded onto the scene.
Italy’s Bending Spoons has agreed to buy US automation company Airtable at an equity value of around $2.25bn in its first acquisition deal after going public last month. The deal implies an enterprise value of $1.28bn.
Founded in 2013 – well before the explosive popularity of generative AI – Airtable enables teams to build custom applications without code or engineering. The company says its platform is used by more than 500,000 organisations, including 80pc of the Fortune 100.
The software start-up was last valued at $11.7bn following a $735m round in 2021, which brought the business up to profitability for the first time. Company CEO Howie Liu said, at the time, that Airtable intended to go public in a few years.
However, the advent of tools such as ChatGPT and Claude have clawed back Airtable’s market share by providing similar and more advanced capabilities. Still, Airtable has managed an annual recurring revenue growth of more than 20pc year-over-year to approximately $480m as of June this year, the company said.
