American software program design firm Figma confidentially filed for an preliminary public providing (IPO) in the US on Tuesday. The event comes greater than a yr after Adobe’s $20 billion acquisition of Figma was cancelled on account of regulatory considerations. Adobe paid a termination payment of $1 billion to Figma.
Figma is among the many most generally used instruments within the consumer expertise (UX) design trade. As of final June, the corporate’s annual recurring income (ARR) reached $700 million, and it has raised a complete of $748.6 million by a number of funding rounds.
Over time, Figma has been the first alternative of software program for consumer interface design, because of its freemium mannequin, comparatively straightforward studying setting, collaborative options (FigJam), and a collection of frequently up to date prototyping instruments.
One of many larger considerations for Figma, greater than the competitors, is the current volatility within the US markets. President Donald Trump’s stance on imposing import tariffs has shaken the market, pushing a couple of corporations to place their plans for an IPO on maintain. Monetary Occasions reported that fintech agency Klarna and medtech firm Medline have postponed their IPO plans.
After an organization information its S-1 registration assertion with the Securities and Change Fee (SEC), the corporate can go public after an estimated 4 months, relying on the SEC overview course of and market circumstances.
‘It’d Be Exhausting to Get Away from Figma’
Moreover, the rise of vibe coding instruments equivalent to Windsurf, Lovable, Cursor, and Replit poses a looming risk to Figma. These instruments not solely help customers in quickly prototyping interfaces but additionally generate the corresponding code, all utilizing pure language prompts.
Is Figma troubled? Perhaps a little bit. The platform lately notified Lovable (an AI-enabled coding platform), forbidding it from utilizing the time period ‘Dev Mode’ in its product. Figma claims to carry the ‘DEV MODE’ trademark.
To know the competitors, AIM reached out to Akshay Verma, founding associate at Prophecy, and beforehand an early member at Apparent, certainly one of India’s main design consultancy companies, now a part of PhonePe.
Verma acknowledged that AI allows everybody, even these with minimal coding expertise, to convey their concepts to life – however there’s a caveat.
“Figma nonetheless has its place for designing interfaces and for prototyping interactions. Prototyping is meaningless in case you’re not going to check with customers. And the device you select depends upon what you’re making an attempt to study,” he added.
He mentioned that if the objective is to study whether or not what one is constructing shall be helpful or fascinating, AI-enabled coding instruments generally is a tremendous alternative. Nonetheless, to check usability, remove biases within the consumer interface, or something past early-stage usefulness, Verma mentioned, “It’d be exhausting to get away with no device that affords extra management, like Figma.”
Nonetheless, he additionally prompt that not all purposes may have the intricate management that Figma presents to craft consumer interfaces. “In truth, most individuals could be happier interacting with an interface constructed utilizing well-built, however cookie-cutter parts, than utilizing a poorly applied customized UI,” he added.
He concluded by saying that speedy prototyping with AI is a “good thing to do”, however Figma isn’t going away quickly for production-related work.
Opinions on this competitors, amongst a various group of trade leaders, lie on a spectrum. AIM additionally reached out to Viba Mohan, a product designer based mostly in California, who mentioned, “I see myself utilizing code to shine my ideas far more than Figma on most days.”
“I additionally see this mirrored within the trade, particularly with smaller groups. It has made the event course of a lot sooner,” added Mohan, whereas indicating that bigger corporations which might be slower to adapt to this modification would possibly face penalties.
Mohan additionally believes it’s untimely to hunt a substitute for Figma. Its in depth consumer base gives a aggressive edge, facilitating the distribution of its lately developed AI options. Furthermore, Figma’s huge plugin ecosystem has enabled customers to seamlessly develop and combine numerous AI-enabled functionalities.
UI/UX Designers, do you know now you can use ChatGPT in Figma.
FigGPT is an AI Figma plugin that can assist you generate content material in your UI design, summarise textual content, change textual content fashion and likewise generate design concepts.
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— Abraham John
(@Abmankendrick) April 3, 2025
Just lately, it was additionally introduced that Modyfi, a browser-based AI-powered design platform, is becoming a member of Figma. Figma’s flagship occasion, Config, is scheduled for Might, and the corporate is predicted to make AI-related updates and bulletins.
Just lately, a couple of customers on X noticed a ‘Web site Builder’ function within the platform. If that is finally launched, it could not solely supply a powerful aggressive benefit towards AI-enabled coding instruments, but additionally low code/no code web site improvement platforms like Webflow, and Framer, and presumably Canva.
“Figma already has the tech basis, and their prototyping engine is midway to interactive websites,” Charles Ugo, a product designer, wrote on X. It’s “already in each designer’s toolkit. In the event that they play their playing cards proper…this may very well be the start of a severe market shift”, he added.
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