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AOL is no longer AWOL.

Like little sunglasses and baggy jeans, AOL is being revived from its ‘90s glory. Tomorrow, the iconic email company is logging back onto Wall Street, thanks to Italian firm Bending Spoons, which acquired AOL at the start of the year, listing on the Nasdaq tomorrow.

Bending Spoons has amassed a somewhat random—but lucrative—media empire through its acquisition strategy, purchasing list-making app Evernote in 2022, video platform Vimeo in 2025, and ticketing site Eventbrite in 2026.

Now, the firm is hoping to raise $1.6 billion in an IPO through selling 58 million shares at a price range of $26 to $29—making Bending Spoons worth roughly $18 billion if all goes to plan.

Bending conventional wisdom: Business is not as usual when it comes to Bending Spoons, starting with their quirky name, which the firm admitted in its prospectus is an ironic inside joke from when the company just had five employees. Despite the multibillion-dollar valuation it’s targeting, Bending Spoons is only marginally profitable, and the company plans to take on leverage to finance its acquisition spree. But that isn’t stopping management from remaining confident it can turn around beleaguered media companies.

“Our Playbook would be simple: acquire digital businesses, implement deep transformations and ongoing optimizations to sustainably expand earnings, and reinvest in additional acquisitions, thereby continuing the compounding cycle,” the company wrote in its prospectus. “As we transform AOL, Eventbrite, and Vimeo, and continue to optimize our other businesses, 2026 is shaping up to be strong. However, our focus remains on maximizing our prospects not for next quarter or even next year, but for the long run.”

#TBT

The last time you received that, “You’ve got mail” notification, life was simpler. AOL first went public back in 1992, under the name America Online, and in 2001 it merged with Time Warner in a notoriously disastrous deal. The company was then bought by Verizon in 2015, and sold once more to private equity giant Apollo Global Management.

Only time will tell if Bending Spoons will just be another stop on AOL’s downward spiral, or if it can kick off a new golden age for that little yellow running man.—LB