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20VC: Airtable Sold for $1.285BN | Leo Achenbrenner's Situational Awareness Blows Up | Moonshot AI Raises $3.5B at $35B | Anthropic Model Breaches Three Companies' Security | Big Tech Earnings: Why Palantir Beat The Rest
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Airtable Sold to Bending Spoons for $1.285B
At 11:15 · chapter starts 4:50
The news is stark: Airtable, founded in 2013 and once valued at $11 billion, has been sold to Bending Spoons for $1.285 billion — roughly 2.8x a $485 million revenue base growing at 20% annually. Rory O'Driscoll opens by defending the acquirer's logic (buying at 2.8x while trading at higher multiples is rational) while noting the deal feels like a loss anchored against the peak [1] — Harry Stebbings "Airtable sold for $1.285B despite $485M in revenue growing 20% YoY — a stunning fall from its $11B peak. The panel argues this may signal a…" 04:50 . Jason Lemkin's more surprising observation: no one outbid Bending Spoons. No Thoma Bravo, no Francisco Partners, no Vista — despite 20% growth and AI workflows at $500 million in revenue, which would normally be exactly the kind of asset PE firms chase. Nikesh Arora offers the most incisive diagnostic: PE firms are sitting on inventory, their stomachs full of software restructurings; they don't need another one. He then introduces his defining framework — Mercedes (AI sprinkled on), Tesla (partial self-driving), Waymo (rebuilt from scratch) — and asks whether Airtable did just enough to become a cash-flow machine for Bending Spoons or whether it'll be disrupted by people building their own CRMs in Lovable or Claude Code. The conversation surfaces a deeper structural issue Rory has been developing: venture holding periods now exceed technology platform change cycles, stranding companies that might otherwise have gone public years ago and traded their way through disruption. Jason lands the human note — founder fatigue is real, and after layoffs, pivots, and a full rebuild, Airtable's founder simply may have tapped out. The consensus: Bending Spoons is the right owner, but the deal will either mark a quiet wave of SaaS capitulations or be forgotten in three hours.
Airtable was acquired by Bending Spoons for $1.285B, a steep discount from its 2021 peak valuation of $11B, on $485M in revenue growing 20% YoY.
Airtable sold for $1.285B despite $485M in revenue growing 20% YoY — a stunning fall from its $11B peak. The panel argues this may signal a quiet wave of SaaS capitulation, where founders who already picked themselves off the floor once simply can't do it again.
Nikesh Arora's three-level AI transformation test cuts through the hype: are you adding AI lipstick (Mercedes), building partial autonomy (Tesla), or rebuilding from scratch (Waymo)? Most companies claiming AI transformation are still in the Mercedes lane — and that's a death sentence.
Venture holding periods have grown longer than technology platform change cycles. Companies that raised late-stage rounds are now getting hit by platform shifts they didn't see coming — and unlike the old days, they can't go public and trade their way through it.
