Bending Spoons buys Tractive: $900 million deal in Pasching

Tractive was founded in 2012 and develops GPS trackers as well as health monitoring devices for pets, which are attached to the collar and transmit the animal's location, activity, and health data in real time via an associated smartphone app. The business model is based on a subscription system. According to company information, Tractive most recently generated annual revenue of more than 100 million euros and was considered, prior to the acquisition, to be Upper Austria's only "unicorn" — that is, a startup with a valuation of at least one billion dollars.

Tractive: From Startup to Unicorn

"On March 25, 2026, we entered into a definitive agreement to acquire tractive GmbH, an Austria-based technology company specializing in GPS tracking and health monitoring devices for pets", the listing prospectus states verbatim. With the acquisition, Bending Spoons — which already operates platforms such as WeTransfer and Vimeo — is expanding its portfolio by another consumer tech company with a subscription model.

For Austria's startup landscape, the deal marks a milestone: According to the "Oberösterreichische Nachrichten", the transaction is among the highest ever achieved for a domestic startup. The previous record holder was the running app Runtastic, founded by Florian Gschwandtner and acquired by Adidas in 2015, which at the time changed hands for 220 million euros.

The Owners and Their Shares

Several prominent investors held stakes in Tractive most recently. The largest share was held by the Swiss Schlumberger heir and former racing driver Harold Primat with 16 percent, followed by Tractive founder Michael Hurnaus with around 12.8 percent. For Gschwandtner, who joined in 2020 as an investor and "growth expert" and most recently held just under five percent through his private foundation, the sale to Bending Spoons now closes a personal circle.

At the same time, the Pasching site faces uncertain changes following the acquisition. What will become of the office campus, only occupied in 2022, and the roughly 235 employees in the long term is currently unclear. According to reports, Bending Spoons is planning massive job cuts that could affect around 160 positions. This would mean that more than half of the approximately 300 employees would be affected by layoffs.

Uncertain Future for the Employees

The scale of the possible cuts weighs particularly heavy against the backdrop of the workforce structure: According to company information, Tractive's international team comes from about 40 different nations. "Besonders schwer wiegt dies für das internationale Team, das laut Unternehmensangaben aus Mitarbeitenden aus etwa 40 Nationen besteht", it is stated in this regard.

Bending Spoons itself has not commented on the exact number of job cuts so far and has only referred to the need for a "leaner organisation". The Milan-based company justified the course to the workforce with the indication that a "leaner organisation" was necessary "to secure the company's long-term flexibility and focus". The parent company in Italy is thus officially silent so far on how many of the roughly 235 employees could lose their jobs.

The Echo of Runtastic

Employees' concerns have been fuelled not least by a prominent example from the recent past: The so-called "Runtastic fate" casts long shadows. The German sporting goods manufacturer Adidas radically closed all Austrian sites at the end of 2024, with around 200 employees losing their jobs at the time. The comparison is obvious, as with the sale of Tractive it is precisely that Runtastic founder figure, Gschwandtner, who is once again accompanying a major deal in Upper Austria.

Beyond the direct effects on Pasching, the deal also carries a significant signalling effect for the entire domestic tech scene. Bending Spoons, based in Milan, is known for its aggressive efficiency course and relies internally on a series of self-developed automation tools operating under the code names "Minerva", "Juno", "Xina", "Matrix", and "Galf", which control central business areas such as marketing, user experience, payments, and analytics. This strategy is apparently also to be applied at Tractive.

Critics see a pattern in this: While the acquisition achieves prices at new heights, it is regularly accompanied by far-reaching restructurings for the acquired workforces. Industry observers point out that Bending Spoons proceeded similarly in earlier acquisitions — such as Evernote or Meetup — where jobs were cut on a large scale.

Economic Policy Assessment

For Upper Austrian economic policy, the process represents an ambivalent finding: On the one hand, the deal underscores the international competitiveness of the location; on the other hand, the loss of numerous qualified jobs in the region is looming. State politicians, who had accompanied Tractive's success through the media for years, are now confronted with uncomfortable questions.

The exact modalities of a possible social plan or a site guarantee have not been made public so far. Nor has a timeframe for the announced restructurings been communicated. In its previous statement, Bending Spoons merely referred in general terms to the necessity of entrepreneurial adjustments.

What is certain is that with the payment of 781 million US dollars immediately after the conclusion of the contract, a substantial portion of the purchase price has already flowed and the remaining 119 million dollars will fall due in May of next year. From the sellers' perspective, the transaction is thus financially sealed — the consequences for Pasching, the employees, and the site will only become fully visible with a delay.

Regardless of the outcome of the restructuring, the Tractive deal slots into a series of notable European tech acquisitions in which Bending Spoons appears as the buyer. In recent years, the company has repeatedly demonstrated that it is willing to spend high sums for established consumer tech brands, even if integration is frequently accompanied by far-reaching cuts.

The coming weeks are likely to show whether Bending Spoons finds ways to noticeably relieve the workforce at the Pasching site, or whether the scenario of halving the employee count becomes reality. For the region and the affected families, nothing less is at stake than the question of how Upper Austria's greatest startup success story can be led into a future beyond the founder generation.