Figma, the company and software we all know and love, went public yesterday, having its stock price going up more than tripling its value in its debut on the New York Stock Exchange.
Shares of Figma were trading as high as $107 only a few minutes after it began trading under the ticker FIG. The company and its early shareholders raised $1.2 billion in its IPO on Wednesday, going with a share price of $33. However, as of Thursday, the stock began trading at $85 a share and took off faster than expected for many. The stock price reached new highs, valuing now almost $130.
The surge gave Figma a market cap of nearly $46 billion, coming as a great breath of fresh air compared to the merger price offered by Adobe in 2022 of $20 billion. The acquisition fell through as some regulatory issues pushed back the process in 2023. Leading to Adobe being the biggest competitor, Figma now has. Adobe has a market cap equaling $152 billion. Praveer Melwani, Figma’s CFO, told Fortune, in an interview on Thursday, that it will be business as usual for Figma moving forward, with possible acquisitions in theri pipeline.
“Candidly, the way we’re running this—or the way the offering shaped up—it’s a majority secondary transaction with a small portion of primary that facilitates paying the tax that’s owed on the RSU [restricted stock unit] settlement,” said Melwani, who became Figma’s first business operations head in 2017. “So, we’re net neutral from a cash impact on technology. The story stays the same. We have been acquisitive in the past, primarily small teams and talent.”
Figma’s opening pop shows not only optimism about Figma’s future but also about its venture-backed overall IPO landscape. Silent in recent years, tech IPOs have been in the midst of a slow but thoughtful decision recovery.
Even more recently, the VC-backed darlings such as Circle, Chime, Hinge Health, and CoreWave have all gone public, with different degrees of success.
Figma itself was backed by a number of Silicon Valley stalwarts, some of whom included Index Ventures, Kleiner Perkins, Greylock, and Sequoia Capital, all of whom hold stakes that are now worth almost $1 billion in the company.
One of the important questions regarding Figma’s growth is how the company will implement AI solutions, and how we would adapt to and capitalize on AI. As a response to this, Greylock venture partner John Lilly told Fortune that Figma and Field are well-positioned.
“The way we’re going to be interacting with more systems and technology over time means interfaces have to be designed right,” said Lilly. “Figma is the way organizations design together, it’s sort of the operating system… As long as we keep investing and keep making sure that we’re on top of AI, integrating the best tools and creating some of them, then AI looks like a huge opportunity to me.”
Dylan also talked about the impact of AI, saying, “The impact of AI will extend far beyond the Figma platform. In the Internet boom of the late 90s, the ethos was 'build it and they will come.” Today, this couldn’t be further from the truth—it’s easier than ever to create an MVP. It used to be that design was an afterthought. Now, design is more than form and function. Design is how you win or lose. Design is bigger than design — and the world needs more designers in charge,” in a blog post made on their platform.
Dylan Field, the CEO and co-founder of the software company, wrote in a blog post on their platform, “When Evan and I started Figma in 2012, our founding vision was to 'eliminate the gap between imagination and reality.”.
Going further and elaborating on how technology got a new perspective over the past few years, also mentioning how theri project was seen as “a bit confusing” when it all started. “Thirteen years later, with the age of AI upon us, this goal of helping individuals and teams get ideas out of their heads and onto a screen feels more possible than ever.”, Dylan added.
Figma is now considered to be the latest and perhaps the most high-profile tech company to hit the market, and Wall Street seems to desire more. After the latest rise in pricing this week and the $1 above the top of that range, Figma shares soared 250% in their first day on the New York Stock Exchange.
Figma is a creative tool that offers the means of creating a web infrastructure. It is the home of every UI UX designer and, now, proven to be one of the most valuable tech companies around the globe. Figma has also reported first-quarter net income of $44.9 million on revenue that jumped 46% year-over-year, reaching $228.2 million.
Also worth mentioning is the fact that Figma’s launch came after a series of strong IPOs this year, among which it its stablecoin issuer Circle’s last month and online trading platform eToro in May.
