Italian bank Intesa invests 70 million euros in app developer Bending Spoons

ROME (Reuters) - Italy's largest bank Intesa Sanpaolo said on Tuesday it was investing 70 million euros ($77 million) to foster the international growth of Bending Spoons, one of the country's most successful app developers.

Milan-based Bending Spoons has registered more than 500 million downloads and has 90 million monthly active users, according to its website. Its apps include popular video editing tool Splice and Remini, an image editor based on artificial intelligence.

Intesa said its financing, to be backed by Italy's export credit agency SACE, aims to help the company's foreign expansion through the purchase of assets and the development of apps in the United States, South America, Europe, Asia and Oceania.

Bending Spoons was founded in 2013 in Copenhagen but moved its headquarters to Italy the following year. Four of its five founders are Italian.

It said in September last year it had raised more than $340 million from investors including Hollywood actor Ryan Reynolds and Kerry Trainor, the former CEO of video streaming platform Vimeo.

In 2020 it also developed the Immuni app, which was intended to help trace COVID-19 infections in Italy but had little impact on efforts to curb the pandemic.

($1 = 0.9084 euros)

(Reporting By Gavin Jones, editing by Keith Weir)