Vimeo Layoffs Eliminate Majority of Staff Just Four Months After $1.38B Acquisition

Industry News

by Nino LeitnerJanuary 24^th, 2026

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Just four months after Italian tech firm Bending Spoons completed its $1.38 billion acquisition of the pioneering video platform, as we were fearing just over a week ago, Vimeo has laid off what former employees describe as “almost everyone” at the company, including the entire video engineering team. The move follows a familiar pattern from Bending Spoons, which previously gutted the teams behind Filmic Pro, WeTransfer, and Evernote.

For filmmakers and cinematographers who have relied on Vimeo for more than two decades as a premium alternative to YouTube, the news raises urgent questions about the platform’s future and the fate of countless portfolios, client projects, and the infrastructure powering services from the Criterion Channel to Dropout TV.

What we know about the Vimeo layoffs

Bending Spoons confirmed to multiple outlets that layoffs were announced at Vimeo on January 20, 2026. The company declined to specify how many employees were affected, citing privacy concerns. However, former staff members have painted a stark picture across LinkedIn and social media.

Dave Brown, Vimeo’s former Vice President of Global Brand and Creative, wrote on LinkedIn that he was impacted along with “a large portion of the company.” Former software engineer Steve Dixon described being laid off alongside “a gigantic amount of the company.” Perhaps most tellingly, Derek Buitenhuis, a 13-year Vimeo veteran who had left in November, shared that “almost everyone” was terminated, “including the entire video team.”

Multiple reports indicate more than 1,000 employees were affected globally, with Israeli outlet CTech reporting that Vimeo laid off “most” of its employees in that country. This marks the platform’s second major workforce reduction in less than six months; Vimeo cut approximately 10% of workers in September 2025, just one week before Bending Spoons announced plans to acquire it.

A familiar pattern

The Milan-based Bending Spoons has developed a well-documented playbook: acquire struggling but recognizable tech brands, slash their workforces dramatically, and coast on existing technology while raising prices. For the filmmaking community, this pattern should ring alarm bells.

In 2023, Bending Spoons acquired Filmic Pro, the once-ubiquitous mobile video capture app featured in countless Apple keynotes. Within months, all 22 original team members were let go, including founder and CEO Neill Barham. The app has received only minimal updates since, with no major feature development despite growing competition from Blackmagic’s free Camera app.

WeTransfer followed a similar trajectory after its July 2024 acquisition. Within two months, 75% of staff were terminated. The company then attempted to use uploaded files to train AI models before reversing course after backlash, and capped its free tier significantly. Evernote, Meetup, and more recently AOL and Eventbrite have all joined Bending Spoons’ portfolio, each experiencing substantial layoffs.

A Bending Spoons spokesperson provided the same statement to multiple outlets: “Going forward, Bending Spoons remains committed to growing Vimeo to meet the needs of its diverse user base.”

Why this matters for filmmakers

Vimeo has occupied a unique position in the filmmaking ecosystem since its founding in 2004, predating YouTube by a year. Where YouTube prioritized viral content and algorithmic discovery, Vimeo built its reputation on high-definition streaming, ad-free viewing, customizable embeds, and a staff-curated approach that elevated technical craft over raw view counts.

The platform’s Staff Picks program launched careers and led directly to projects like HBO’s High Maintenance, which began as a Vimeo-exclusive web series. Documentarian John Wilson developed his distinctive observational style through Vimeo uploads years before How to With John Wilson premiered. Directors including Spike Lee and Don Hertzfeldt found an audience through the platform’s curation.

Beyond portfolios and passion projects, Vimeo’s infrastructure powers significant parts of the professional video ecosystem. The Criterion Channel relies on Vimeo technology, as do corporate clients including Starbucks and the UK’s National Theatre. Dropout TV, the successful streaming service that emerged from CollegeHumor, uses Vimeo’s backend. For working cinematographers, Vimeo’s video review tools have served as an alternative to Frame.io for client feedback workflows.

Just last October, Vimeo announced ambitious updates at its REFRAME conference, including a rebuilt Review system, AI-powered library search, and support for Apple Immersive Video and VR180 content. Whether these features will continue to develop under a skeleton crew remains uncertain.

A platform that lost its way

The acquisition did not come out of nowhere. As CineD reported in detail following filmmaker Matt WhoisMatt Johnson’s video essay on the subject, Vimeo had been bleeding creators for years before Bending Spoons entered the picture.

Self-serve subscribers, the individual creators and small businesses who embodied Vimeo’s original community, collapsed from 1.5 million in 2022 to approximately 53,500 by Q3 2024. A 2022 bandwidth cap of two terabytes monthly made the platform untenable for working professionals whose viral content could effectively shut down their accounts. Copyright purges eliminated archives, and the Staff Picks program that once launched careers was quietly discontinued in EU and UK regions by late 2024.

When Vimeo spun off from IAC as an independent public company in 2021, it was valued at $8.5 billion. By the time Bending Spoons acquired it in November 2025, that figure had cratered to $1.38 billion, an 84% decline. The company had stabilized financially, reporting $417 million in revenue and $27 million in profit by 2024, but the creator community that once defined its identity had largely moved on.

What happens now to the platform after the Vimeo layoffs?

The immediate concern for many filmmakers will be their existing content. Vimeo hosts two decades of portfolios, client work, and archived projects. While Bending Spoons has stated its commitment to the platform’s diverse user base, its track record suggests aggressive cost-cutting will continue.

History offers some guidance, none of it reassuring. Filmic Pro remains available but functionally stagnant. Evernote survived but with drastically reduced features and increased pricing. Whether Vimeo follows the same path, or whether the sheer scale of its hosted content and infrastructure dependencies forces a different approach, remains to be seen.

For cinematographers who have built their professional presence on Vimeo, now may be the time to ensure local backups of all content and consider alternative platforms for new work. The era of Vimeo as a filmmaker-first platform appears to have ended definitively with these layoffs.

Are you currently using Vimeo for portfolio hosting or client work? How do you plan to respond to these changes? Let us know in the comments below.