Although former Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRKA) (NYSE: BRKB) CEO and resident stock-picking guru Warren Buffett eventually warmed up to certain kinds of technology stocks, he still never really embraced the higher-risk, higher-priced sliver of this sector’s opportunities before stepping back from both roles at the end of last year.
Current Berkshire chief executive Greg Abel, however, isn’t quite as averse to the idea as his predecessor was.
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That’s the top takeaway from a choice he made in July of this year, and then doubled down on in October. Already holding a major stake in technology giant Alphabet, in mid-October, Abel steered another $330 million worth of Berkshire’s idle cash into a company called Bending Spoons (NASDAQ: BSP), adding to a $600 million stake Berkshire quietly scooped up as part of its IPO in the middle of this year.
This is definitely not yesteryear’s Berkshire Hathaway. And yet Bending Spoons somehow seems like a perfect Berkshire holding.
What’s Bending Spoons?
You’ve probably never heard of the $30 billion company. You’re most definitely familiar with some of the digital platforms it owns, though. Ticket-sales website Eventbrite, cloud-based note-taking service Evernote, video-sharing venue Vimeo, and web portal AOL are now some of the brands owned and operated by Bending Spoons.
At first blush, it seems like the patron saint of lost causes. AOL was once one of the internet’s go-to navigation options, but it was eventually displaced by Alphabet’s Google. Vimeo can’t really compete with Alphabet’s YouTube either. And to be sure, Google and YouTube aren’t in any existential danger.
Bending Spoons doesn’t necessarily need to topple its competitors, though, to reward its shareholders. It only needs to identify digital platforms with more potential than is being unlocked, and then acquire those platforms and make those necessary changes.
And it’s done so. Since acquiring Evernote back in 2023, it’s added over 200 improvements or features, including integrations with AI platforms like Claude and ChatGPT. It’s also quintupled the number of users of AI-powered photo-editing app Remini since buying it in 2021. Vimeo is getting better, too, gaining traction as a tool that increasingly caters to enterprises with specific business-oriented needs.
