Bending Spoons' Airtable cuts total 190 jobs, and a law firm asks if 60 days' notice was given
California's WARN filing puts 190 jobs and a January 15, 2027, effective date on layoffs the acquirer would not count. Cuts were announced in early October with staff leaving that same week; a plaintiffs' firm opened an investigation on October 22 asking whether the 60 days of notice the WARN Act requires were ever given.
Vincent Jiang · 3 min read
The number Bending Spoons+5.50% — Bending Spoons, up 5.50 percent today never published is now on file with the state. A California WARN notice filed October 15, 2026, under "Formagrid Inc. dba Airtable$1.285B — Airtable, private, latest valuation $1.285B" says 190 jobs end January 15, 2027, at One Front Street, 28th floor, San Francisco 1.
When Bending Spoons, the Nasdaq-listed Italian group that buys and overhauls older software names like Evernote$200M — Evernote, private, latest valuation $200M, Vimeo$1.38B — Vimeo, private, latest valuation $1.38B and AOL$1.4B — AOL, private, latest valuation $1.4B, closed its $1.285 billion purchase of Airtable on September 4, it said only that a "large portion of the pre-acquisition team" would leave with "substantial separation packages," and declined to share a headcount 34. The filing supplies one.
The dates do not line up, and a law firm noticed
On October 22, Strauss Borrelli, a plaintiffs' class-action firm, opened a WARN Act investigation into whether Airtable gave the 60 days' written notice the federal law requires before a mass layoff 2. If it did not, the workers may be entitled to 60 days of pay and benefits 2.
The arithmetic is the problem: the separations were announced in early October, with affected staff told they would leave by the end of that week, per the company's own October posts and reporting filed by October 12 34, and the state's effective date is January 15, 2027 1. What the pre-acquisition team built is still shipping: Airtable's October 21 Fall Release added Omni 2.0, Canvas in open beta, bring-your-own agents, agent permissions and an audit log 7.
Revenue more than doubled in five quarters, almost all of it bought
Data
| Value | |
|---|---|
| Q1 '25 | 258.95 |
| Q2 '25 | 311.1 |
| Q1 '26 | 601.32 |
| Q2 '26 | 704.16 |
The machine eating the team is also writing the code
CEO Luca Ferrari told Bloomberg that AI writes at least 90% of Bending Spoons' code, and called the "SaaSpocalypse" selloff of SaaS companies a buying opportunity with a double payoff: cheaper targets and cheaper development 8.
The capital behind that thesis is serious. Berkshire Hathaway+0.59% — Berkshire Hathaway, up 0.59 percent today, under new CEO Greg Abel, has committed $930 million, the latest $330 million at $33 a share via a Form 6-K; the stock jumped 41% on the news before giving back ground to close Monday at $45.65 5. Q2 revenue was just over $704 million, up 126%, with net income of $177 million, up 171% 5; the chart above shows how much of that climb is bought rather than built.
Who pays, who bets
Bay Area planned tech cuts have passed 14,000 in 2026, above last year's 10,170 4.
For readers deciding on BSP stock before the next print, which carries the first Airtable days: the upside is renewals holding after the team that built the product is gone; the risks are WARN back pay if the law firm is right 2 and churn like Evernote's, where subscribers in Switzerland paying through Google Play now face Evernote Personal Annual rising to CHF 163 a year from December, up from CHF 109, about 50% more 6. The company that owns the rest of this story, our earlier pieces on the September funding round and the October staff cuts [links below], is pricing both sides of that bet.
Links: our September 12 profile of the roll-up model (/article/bending-spoons-hunts-fallen-unicorns-most-of-its-growth-is-bought), our October 11 pricing piece (/article/bending-spoons-paid-1-28-billion-for-airtable-at-2-7-times-sales-glide-prices-the-exit-at-25-a-month) and our October 12 cuts piece (/article/bending-spoons-cuts-much-of-airtable-s-staff-weeks-after-1-28-billion-deal-glide-sells-a-25-replacement).
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