Web 2.0-era personal productivity app maker Evernote Corp., said today it has entered an agreement to be acquired by Italian technology company Bending Spoons S.p.A. for an undisclosed price.

Founded in 2000, the year of the dot-com crash, Evernote builds apps and products that are claimed to define the way individuals and teams work together today. The company offered collaborative workspaces years before the likes of Google Docs even existed, allowing users to work anywhere and make notes with support for text, images, audio, scans, PDFs and documents.

Evernote was a trailblazer in its market, offering things like searchable images, but none of its tech in 2022 is unique and its user numbers reflect that. A relaunch of the app in 2015, as the company faced stiff competition, failed to take. People wrote about the company’s demise back in 2018, and other reports described the company as being in a death spiral.

To its credit, Evernote is still going today, albeit with little attention as leading tech companies such as Microsoft Corp. and Google LLC provide the same services for free.

The company acquiring Evernote, Bending Spoons, is little-known, but according to its website, the company makes mobile apps such as the Splice video editing suite and an artificial-intelligence-powered photo enhancement and restoration app called Remini.

The company claims that its apps have been downloaded more than 500 million times and that it has 90 million monthly active users. Bending Spoons is venture capital-backed, having raised $341.2 million, according to Crunchbase.

Officially, the acquisition is being described as a strategic step forward for Evernote.

“The path we’ve taken in recent years — rebuilding our apps in order to expand Evernote’s utility and deepen its appeal — has made possible new features, deep focus on our customers, and ultimately, an #everbetter productivity solution on the cusp of the next stage of innovation and growth,” Evernote Chief Executive Officer Ian Small wrote in a blog post. “Teaming up with Bending Spoons will speed that journey, accelerating the delivery of improvements across our Teams, Professional, Personal and Free offerings.”

Coming into its acquisition, Evernote had raised $290 million in venture capital, the last raise in 2014, followed by three rounds of debt financing through 2021. Evernote was an early unicorn, a startup with a valuation of more than $1 billion, but it was also pronounced as the first dead unicorn as far back as 2015.

The acquisition is expected to be completed in early 2023.

Image: Evernote