Figma

Figma was founded in the summer of 2012 by Dylan Field and Evan Wallace, two Brown University computer science students. Field, a year behind Wallace, chaired Brown's CS Departmental Undergraduate Group and left school on a Thiel Fellowship (a $100,000, later reported as up to $234,460, grant from Peter Thiel requiring recipients to leave college) to build the company full-time; Wallace, who had studied graphics and worked as a CS teaching assistant, joined him in California after finishing his degree. The pair experimented with several ideas -- including drone software, a meme generator, and photo/object-segmentation tools -- before settling on a browser-based, real-time collaborative design tool, explicitly inspired by what Google Docs had done for text editing. Early technical execution centered on using WebGL and WebAssembly (and a purpose-built language, Skew) to render complex vector graphics with GPU acceleration inside a browser, a novel approach at the time. Figma opened an invite-only preview in December 2015 and launched publicly on September 27, 2016, followed by its first paid product in 2017.

Figma built its business by directly targeting Adobe's design-tool dominance, emphasizing real-time multiplayer collaboration, a free entry tier, and a browser-native (rather than desktop-installed) architecture. The company expanded well beyond its original design/prototyping tool: Figma Community launched in 2019, FigJam (digital whiteboarding) launched in April 2021, Dev Mode (design-to-code handoff) launched in 2023, and Figma Slides (presentations) launched in beta in 2024. Growth attracted a marquee customer base (Microsoft, Airbnb, Netflix, Uber, Duolingo, Zoom, Notion, and others) and a broad plugin/developer ecosystem (3,000+ plugins). By April 2020 Figma was valued above $2 billion in a $50 million Series D; by June 2021 it had roughly tripled to a $10 billion valuation in a $200 million Series E led by Durable Capital Partners.

On September 15, 2022, Adobe announced a definitive agreement to acquire Figma for approximately $20 billion in cash and stock (roughly half cash, half stock), Adobe's largest acquisition ever, with Dylan Field remaining as CEO reporting into Adobe's Digital Media business. The deal triggered immediate controversy: Adobe shares fell as much as 17% on the announcement, designers voiced concern about product independence, and critics (including comparisons to Facebook's WhatsApp acquisition) argued Adobe was buying out its fastest-growing competitor rather than out-innovating it. The U.S. Department of Justice opened an antitrust investigation in November 2022, and the UK Competition and Markets Authority and European Commission both opened formal merger reviews in 2023, provisionally finding the deal would harm competition. Facing no clear path to the necessary EU and UK regulatory approvals, Adobe and Figma mutually agreed to terminate the merger on December 18, 2023 -- roughly 15 months after announcement. Under the original agreement's reverse-termination provisions, Adobe paid Figma a $1.0 billion cash termination fee, which Figma recognized as one-time income in its 2023 financial results (per Figma's S-1). Following the collapse, Figma ran a 2024 employee/investor tender offer (funded partly by RSU modifications) to provide liquidity to equity holders, and CB Insights estimated the company's standalone value at $8.3-9 billion at the time.

Business model

SaaS subscription platform sold via self-serve (Starter, Professional plans) and enterprise sales (Organization, Enterprise plans); multi-product seat-based pricing (Viewer, Collab, Content, Dev, Full seats) introduced March 2025 covering Figma Design, FigJam, Figma Slides, Dev Mode, Figma Make, Figma Sites, Figma Buzz, and Figma Draw.

Recurring per-seat subscription revenue (annual/monthly), with usage-based/credit components emerging for AI features (e.g., Figma Make); free Starter and education tiers drive top-of-funnel adoption that converts to paid seats.