Figma

Overview

Figma is the browser-based collaborative interface-design company founded in 2012 by Brown University classmates Dylan Field and Evan Wallace, which replaced emailed design files with a single shared canvas where whole teams could work at once — and which then became the subject of one of the most expensive failed acquisitions in software history, when Adobe’s roughly $20 billion purchase collapsed under European and British antitrust opposition in December 2023 (VC News Daily; Associated Press). Adobe paid Figma a $1 billion termination fee for a deal that never closed, and Figma continued as an independent company (TechTarget).

Designing in the browser, together

Figma’s founding thesis was that design software had failed to follow the rest of software into the cloud. Field, the company’s founder and chief executive, argued at its 2015 launch that “for years software has been moving away from the operating system and into the cloud, where everything from simple word processing to advanced project management has become accessible online, and collaborative in real-time. But design software hasn’t caught up — it is offline and isolated” (VC News Daily). Figma was founded in 2012 by Field and Wallace, Brown classmates, when Field was named to Peter Thiel’s Thiel Fellowship program for young entrepreneurs (VC News Daily).

The product that emerged was deliberately narrow and deliberately online: “the world’s first professional-grade, online tool created specifically for interface design,” built using the WebGL API so that design teams could collaborate on web and app interface projects entirely in the browser, with designs shareable by link, constantly saved, and reviewable or editable by team members on any operating system and any device (VC News Daily). Real-time comments and notifications, colours and asset libraries were built directly into each project, with simultaneous editing to follow (VC News Daily). The company launched its flagship design program in late 2015, having raised $18 million in total — a $4 million seed round in 2013 led by Danny Rimer at Index Ventures and a $14 million Series A led by Greylock Partners, whose John Lilly joined Rimer on Figma’s board (VC News Daily).

By 2022 that thesis had won the product-design market. The Associated Press described Figma, founded in 2012, as allowing “those who design interactive mobile and web applications to collaborate through multi-player workflows, sophisticated design systems and a rich developer ecosystem” (Associated Press). It was that position — not a single feature — that Adobe wanted to buy.

The $20 billion deal and the regulators’ “future competition” theory

On September 15, 2022, Adobe agreed to buy Figma in an approximately $20 billion cash-and-stock deal, saying Figma’s web-based, multi-player capabilities would accelerate the delivery of Adobe’s Creative Cloud technologies on the web (Associated Press). Field would continue to lead the Figma team, reporting to David Wadhwani, president of Adobe’s Digital Media business, and each company would run independently until the transaction closed (Associated Press). Investors hated the price at once: Adobe’s stock fell more than 9 percent before the market opened that Thursday (Associated Press), and Reuters later reported that more than $30 billion of Adobe’s market value had been wiped out when the deal was announced (Reuters).

The regulatory case against the deal rested on an argument about the future as much as the present. The European Commission opened its investigation in August 2023 and sent Adobe a statement of objections the following month, saying the “proposed acquisition of Figma may reduce competition in the global markets for the supply of interactive product design software and of other creative design software” (TechTarget). The Commission predicted that a merged Adobe and Figma would constrain competition for interactive design tools, and that on its own Figma would likely enter the vector and raster image-editing markets and take on Adobe’s powerhouse applications, Photoshop and Illustrator — competition the merger would eliminate (TechTarget).

Britain’s Competition and Markets Authority reached a parallel conclusion in its provisional findings of November 28, 2023: the deal would eliminate competition between the two main companies in product-design software, reduce innovation and the development of new competitive products, and remove Figma as a threat to Photoshop and Illustrator, likely harming innovation “for software used by the vast majority of UK digital designers” (Reuters). The European Union’s Commission and the CMA were the two authorities whose approval the companies ultimately could not obtain.

On December 18, 2023, Adobe and Figma mutually terminated the agreement, saying there was “no clear path” to receiving necessary regulatory approvals from the European Commission and the CMA (Gazette & Herald). Adobe chief executive Shantanu Narayen said the companies “strongly disagree with the recent regulatory findings, but we believe it is in our respective best interests to move forward independently” (Reuters). The $1 billion termination fee had been part of the original September 2022 agreement, and a new termination agreement between Adobe and Figma invoked the payment clause, according to Adobe (TechTarget). Adobe had also refused to offer remedies to the CMA, on grounds that no remedy preserving the deal’s benefits would satisfy its concerns, while British regulators had indicated they would require Adobe to divest Figma Design, a core asset of the acquisition (Reuters). Figma, which describes itself as a “single multiplayer canvas” to design digital products, would continue releasing products and AI features on its own, according to Field (TechTarget).

The deal’s other casualty: Adobe XD

The Figma saga also exposed what Adobe had already given up. In its defence to regulators, Adobe argued it did not compete with Figma in any meaningful way, and said in November 2023 that its only product relevant to the antitrust question was Adobe XD, which had lost $25 million as a standalone app over the previous three years (Reuters). That defence did not persuade the regulators — and it framed the aftermath: Adobe emerged from the failed deal without Figma and without a credible product-design challenger of its own, while Figma emerged independent, $1 billion richer, and with its market position publicly validated by the very regulators who had blocked its sale.

What this profile does not claim

This profile does not claim Figma was founded in 2011: that year appears in some announcement coverage, but the launch report and the Associated Press both give 2012, and the 2011 variant was not verified from a source read in full. It does not assert anything about Evan Wallace’s role after founding beyond co-founder status, since no source read in full verified a later departure or role. It does not cover Figma’s post-2023 history, including any public listing, revenue or valuation after termination — the narrative ends at independence with the $1 billion fee. And it does not treat the “$30 billion wiped out” figure as an audited loss: it is Reuters’ reporting of the market reaction at announcement, not a verified accounting of value destruction.