Uber Paid Up for ezCater While Bending Spoons Paid a Tenth

Uber agreed on Oct. 6 to pay $2.3 billion in cash for ezCater, a price Crunchbase News puts 53 percent above the Boston catering platform's last venture valuation. Two months earlier, Bending Spoons paid Airtable roughly a tenth of the valuation it carried in 2021. The three deals share one feature that the price tags hide: none of the sellers had raised equity in at least four years.

Crunchbase News reporter Joanna Glasner counted 15 such deals in an Oct. 22 article, each involving a well-funded company that had gone four or more years without an equity round. The three biggest sit at opposite ends of the pricing range, and the gap between them is the useful part.

ezCater: above the last mark, below nothing

Uber said ezCater generated more than $2.5 billion in gross bookings over the trailing 12 months, growing in the high teens, with orders averaging more than $400, according to Nation's Restaurant News, which quoted the press release. Uber also said the business is profitable on an adjusted operating basis. Gross bookings are what customers spend through the platform, not ezCater's own revenue, so the $2.5 billion figure is not a sales number.

The last round was a $100 million raise in late 2021 led by SoftBank, per the same report. Crunchbase gives the valuation as $1.5 billion pre-money. Add the round and you reach the "more than $1.6 billion" that the Boston Globe attributes to past disclosures, which implies a post-money figure near $1.6 billion. Against that base, $2.3 billion is a premium of about 44 percent by our arithmetic, a smaller number than the 53 percent Crunchbase quotes because it uses the higher base.

ezCater has about 900 employees, roughly 300 of them in Boston, and more than 140,000 restaurant partners, the Globe reported. Nihad Rahman, ezCater's chief executive, said the company was "thrilled to be joining forces with Uber." Uber Chief Executive Dara Khosrowshahi said catering "can be a huge revenue stream for restaurants." The deal is expected to close in the coming months.

The Globe also reported that Uber paid $1 billion for the liquor-delivery service Drizly in 2021 and shut the brand about three years later.

Miro and Airtable: a tenth of the peak

Bending Spoons, the Milan-based app company, took the other route. It agreed on Sept. 10 to buy Miro for $1.355 billion in cash, an enterprise value that aiweekly.co's summary of Bloomberg's report says implies an equity value of about $1.79 billion once Miro's net cash is counted. Miro was valued at $17.5 billion in January 2022, when ICONIQ Growth and Accel led a $400 million Series C. The report puts the price roughly 90 percent below that mark.

Miro's annual recurring revenue is about $600 million, nearly 90 percent of it from business and enterprise customers, the same report said. At the enterprise value, Bending Spoons is paying about 2.3 times that recurring revenue. Some Miro shareholders agreed to roll $295 million of their proceeds into new Bending Spoons stock, which means part of the price is not leaving the company.

Airtable closed first. Bending Spoons announced completion on Sept. 4 and did not give a price. Crunchbase News gives it as $1.28 billion against the $11 billion Airtable carried after its December 2021 Series F, which Glasner called "barely over one-tenth" of that figure. The price rests on Crunchbase alone, and Airtable's announcement does not confirm it.

1. ezCater (Uber)2.3 $B
2. Miro (Bending Spoons)1.35 $B
3. Airtable (Bending Spoons)1.28 $B
4. Headspace (Sword Health)0.3 $B

Source: Crunchbase News (Oct. 22, 2026); Nation's Restaurant News; aiweekly.co. Miro is enterprise value; Airtable price is Crunchbase's figure.

What the 15-deal list shows about price

Company	Buyer	Price	Last valuation
ezCater	Uber	$2.3 billion cash	$1.5 billion pre-money, late 2021
Miro	Bending Spoons	$1.355 billion cash	$17.5 billion, January 2022
Airtable	Bending Spoons	$1.28 billion (Crunchbase)	$11 billion, December 2021
Headspace	Sword Health	about $300 million (reported)	about $2.6 billion peak

The Headspace figure is the least firm: Crunchbase describes the Sword Health deal as reportedly valued at about $300 million, and the buyer has not been quoted in anything we fetched. Crunchbase lists a fifth case, Shein's $100 million purchase of Everlane in spring 2026, against a 2020 valuation in the hundreds of millions.

The split follows the sellers' economics, not their age. ezCater is profitable and growing at a disclosed rate; Uber is buying a business it can describe in bookings and order size. Miro and Airtable were priced as software subscriptions whose 2021 multiples had nothing to defend them, and a buyer with a record of owning and operating acquired products could bid on cash flow. Bending Spoons Chief Executive Luca Ferrari said the company buys businesses "with the intention of owning and operating them for the long term, and Miro will be no exception." Neither Bending Spoons nor Miro has said what the deal means for Miro's staff or its 13 offices, according to the same report.

What would change the read

Three things would test this reading. The first is whether Uber's filing for the deal discloses ezCater's revenue rather than bookings, which would let the premium be expressed against sales. The second is the fourth-quarter close for Miro, since regulators have not yet cleared it. The third is whether another seller from the 2021 class prices closer to ezCater's premium than to Airtable's discount.

The contrast with fresh money is stark. Eka Robotics' $150 million Series A put the company at $1.45 billion, per TechCrunch's headline, and Zetwerk's Indian listing closed 8 percent below its issue price. Sellers from 2021 are being priced by buyers with cash and a view of margins, not by the last investor's enthusiasm. Uber's closing, expected in the coming months, is the next observable date.