NEW YORK, July 2 -- The company that just reopened Wall Street's frozen market for software stocks does not build artificial intelligence, chase cloud contracts, or promise to automate anyone's job. It buys the internet's discarded relics - AOL, Vimeo, Evernote, a diary app nobody remembers - strips their costs and squeezes them for cash. On Wednesday, that unglamorous formula was worth $25.5 billion to the investors who priced its stock.

Bending Spoons S.p.A. priced its initial public offering at $29 a share, above the marketed range of $26 to $28, raising $1.68 billion by selling 58 million shares. The stock opened around $31 on the Nasdaq under the ticker BSP and surged as high as 41 percent intraday before settling with a first-day g...