Andy Garcia · freelance dev
FRENES
Back to the blog
SaaS & Pricing

Airtable Cut a "Large Portion" of Staff 38 Days After Its Sale. "Nothing Changes" Has No End Date.

October 19, 2026 7 min read

On Monday, October 12, Alessandro Savarese, who joined Airtable in September to lead product development after its acquisition by Bending Spoons, published a post on Airtable's newsroom titled "Back to bases: What's next at Airtable." Under the heading "A leaner, more focused team," it says: "We're parting ways with a large portion of the pre-acquisition team, who will be leaving by the end of the week with substantial separation packages."

Airtable did not say how many people. It had roughly 800 workers before the acquisition, according to the San Francisco Chronicle; Airtable's own About page, undated, says 700 people. Bending Spoons announced its agreement to buy the company on August 4, at an enterprise value of $1.285 billion, and completed the deal on September 4. The announcement came 38 days later.

A few paragraphs down, the post turns to customers: "For customers, nothing changes regarding your plan, price, or service offering."

I sit on both sides of that sentence. I buy SaaS to run my own products, and I build software for small businesses, BidForge among them. So I read it the way I would read any reassurance from a vendor I depend on: next to the documents that actually bind.

Same author, same day, two words

Savarese posted a version of the announcement in the Airtable Community the same day. Most of it matches. The size of the cut does not. On the forum, Airtable is "parting ways with several members of the pre-acquisition team, many of whom will be leaving by the end of the week." On the newsroom, it is "a large portion."

"Several" and "a large portion" do not describe the same event. The community, where builders and consultants gather, got the softer word. The newsroom, which the press quotes, got the stronger one. Neither gives a number.

The newsroom version also ends with something the forum version does not have. Bending Spoons is listed on Nasdaq, so the post closes with a forward-looking statements notice: actual results "may differ materially" from the plans it describes, and Airtable assumes "no obligation to update any forward-looking statements." That is standard language for a public company. It is also a reminder of what a roadmap post is.

What the terms say about price

The document that governs a self-serve Airtable customer is the Terms of Service, last updated May 31, 2024. Section 6 is short and clear:

"We may change Subscription Plans, including by offering new services or features for additional fees and charges or by adding or amending fees and charges for existing Subscription Plans, in our sole discretion. Any change to a Subscription Plan's pricing or payment terms will become effective in the billing cycle following notice of such change to you as provided in these Terms."

Renewals happen "at the applicable price as of the renewal date." Charges are made in United States dollars. And near the end, the terms add that no employee or representative is authorized to modify them, and that "any statements or comments made between you and any of our employees or representatives are expressly excluded from these Terms."

I am a CTO, not a lawyer, and a public newsroom post is not a sales call. But the direction is plain. The sentence about price describes the present. The clause describes what Airtable can do, and how fast.

Put numbers on it. The pricing page lists Team at $20 per user per month and Business at $45 per user per month, both billed annually. A workspace with ten editors on Business pays 10 × $45 × 12 = $5,400 a year. On annual billing, a price change announced tomorrow would land at your next renewal, so you have up to twelve months of visibility. On monthly billing, it lands in the billing cycle after the notice: a month at most.

There is a second reading of the same clause. Airtable may offer "new services or features for additional fees." The post announces several of them "in the coming weeks": an upgraded Omni, its built-in assistant; Airtable Canvas, to build custom apps on your data; "a more powerful MCP"; and "bring your own" agent and keys options. It also promises business customers "better visibility over AI credits consumption." "Nothing changes in your plan" covers the plan you have. It does not say what the new things will cost.

What the new owner says it does

I do not need commentators to describe Bending Spoons. It describes itself. The press release announcing the Airtable deal on August 4 carries its standard description: the transformation of an acquired business "is typically deep and entails reorganizing teams, overhauling technology, redesigning user interfaces, accelerating product development, and enhancing marketing and monetization."

Monetization is on that list in the company's own words. Here is what it looked like at another acquisition. On August 13, Bloomberg reported on a freelance web designer who had paid Harvest, the invoicing software Bending Spoons bought in 2025, $211.20 for his last annual subscription. In July he was told it would renew at $2,547.60. That is 12.06 times the old price.

The organization side follows the same pattern. TechCrunch, citing Bending Spoons, reported that it added 1,830 full-time equivalent team members through the acquisitions of AOL, Eventbrite and Vimeo, and that once those transformations are substantially complete later in 2026, it expects "only a few hundred to remain."

To be fair to the other side: Bending Spoons' chief product officer, Matteo Danieli, told TechCrunch that despite all the changes, customer retention has been "remarkably stable." And the Airtable post lists real work. A small "Speedy Squad" shipped more than 30 improvements in three weeks, including higher automation limits and a "delete record" action for automations. New Performance and Infrastructure teams are meant to bring quicker-loading bases, a wider EU data residency offering and higher limits on records, fields and syncs. For a European buyer, that EU residency line matters.

Note what has no date. In the community thread, the first reply, posted October 13, asked for a timeline on increased record limits: "initially this was scheduled for release back in Q2 roughly but has been pushed back." Savarese had written that he would be in the thread "over the next few days answering what I can." As of October 19, the thread showed two replies and no answer from Airtable.

What I would check before the next renewal

None of this says Airtable will raise prices. It says the sentence that told you it will not is not where your protection lives. Here is what I would do this month if a client's operations ran on Airtable.

Find the document that governs you. Self-serve customers are on the terms above. If you signed an order form or an enterprise agreement, read its renewal clause. If you are renewing soon, ask for a cap on the renewal price in writing, in the order form. A blog sentence is not a clause, and the terms themselves say employee statements are excluded.

Choose the billing cadence on purpose. Annual billing buys up to a year of price visibility. It also means that if you cancel, you keep access until the end of the term with no refund, except within fourteen days of purchase for customers in the European Union or Turkey. Monthly billing keeps you mobile and exposed. Pick the risk you prefer, not the default.

Map your exit before you need it. List every automation, API integration, sync and webhook that touches Airtable. Then export one base you cannot afford to lose and try to rebuild it somewhere else, once. The time it takes is the real price of leaving, and it is the number you bring to the renewal call.

Do not wire new client workflows to features that do not exist yet. The MCP upgrade and the bring-your-own-agent options are announced for the coming weeks, by a team that has just changed. I would wait until they ship, read their pricing and limits, and only then build on them.

Watch the AI credits line. When a vendor promises better visibility over credit consumption, credits are becoming a billing unit worth watching. Track your usage now, so a future change is a comparison, not a surprise.

A price sentence in a blog post tells you what the company intends today. The clause in the terms tells you what it can do tomorrow. Plan on the clause.

Sources

A project like this one?

I design and deploy products like this. Let's talk.

Let's talk