How Figma’s $68 Billion IPO Redrew the Future of Collaborative Design

When Figma rang the bell at the New York Stock Exchange on July 31, 2025, it did more than signal the start of trading for a design software company. It sent a message to Wall Street that the technology IPO market is alive again. Figma’s $1.2 billion debut, which started with shares priced at $33 and closed the day at $115.50, vaulted the company to a market value near $68 billion. It is one of the biggest tech openings since the pandemic era, and it tells an unusual story about how a young design startup found itself on a stage that few founders ever reach.

I first heard about Figma through Iniobong, you may know her, a friend who (at the time I know) designs eye-catching user interfaces. She showed me a file and I was made to understand that teams could jump into the same file from different continents and tweak screens in real time, leaving comments like sticky notes in the margins. Back then, I had no idea this simple idea would push Figma to the center of the modern software toolkit.

Figma began in 2012. Dylan Field, who now stands at 33 years old and commands a stake worth over $6 billion, co-founded the company with Evan Wallace. They wanted to bring design to the browser. This was not an obvious bet. At the time, Adobe ruled the design world with heavyweight desktop software like Photoshop and Illustrator. Graphic designers often worked alone or passed huge files back and forth by email. Field and Wallace saw an opportunity for real-time collaboration. They wanted to do for design what Google Docs did for documents.

Early prototypes were rough. Figma’s founders needed to convince investors they could build a smooth, powerful tool that ran fully in the cloud. It took years of tinkering before the product felt good enough for teams to trust it for serious work. By 2016, Figma launched publicly. The promise was simple: designers anywhere could share a file link, work together instantly, and skip the endless back-and-forth.

That promise resonated. In a world shifting rapidly toward remote work, the idea of design without borders became both a selling point and a mission. Figma expanded its tools beyond interface design to whiteboards and slides. People who never thought of themselves as designers now found Figma useful. Today, about two-thirds of Figma’s 13 million monthly active users do not have “designer” in their job title. Product managers, marketers, and engineers all meet inside Figma’s browser-based canvas.

Figma’s financial growth matches its vision. Revenue for the quarter ending March 31 hit $228.2 million, up 46 percent year over year. Net income more than tripled to nearly $45 million. It serves big names like Google, Microsoft, Netflix, and Uber. Over a thousand customers pay Figma more than $100,000 each year. It boasts gross margins above 91 percent, a dream figure for any software investor. These are not just pretty slides for an IPO pitch. They show a business model that works at scale.

This week’s public debut might never have happened if an earlier plan had succeeded. In 2022, Adobe moved to buy Figma for $20 billion. Many saw the deal as Adobe’s bid to take out a fast-growing rival. Regulators in Europe did not like that idea. They warned the merger would likely hurt innovation in the design software market. By late 2023, the deal was dead. Adobe paid Figma a $1 billion breakup fee. It was a failed acquisition that left Figma with more cash in the bank and something to prove.

When the merger collapsed, some wondered whether Figma could stand on its own against a giant like Adobe. Dylan Field made clear this week that he never saw the buyout as the only future for his company. In interviews, he repeated a line that felt both honest and defiant: the share price is a moment in time, but the mission must stay clear. For Field, independence means control. He still holds strong voting power over Figma’s direction.

Figma’s IPO comes at a time when the wider tech market is searching for fresh signs of life. In early 2022, rising interest rates and inflation fears froze the IPO pipeline. Startups that might have gone public in normal years stayed private longer. Venture capital cooled. This year, though, signs of revival have appeared. Online bank Chime and AI infrastructure company CoreWeave have all gone public. Figma’s surge on its first day is likely to boost the confidence of other venture-backed firms. Renaissance Capital notes that 120 IPOs have priced so far this year, up nearly 50 percent from last year. The gates may finally be opening.

At the exchange floor on Thursday morning, Figma’s first trade at $85 shocked even seasoned watchers. A share priced at $33 only hours before was now flying at more than double that figure. Trading paused as the price jumped past $112. It finally settled at $115.50. In a single trading day, Figma transformed from a solid $19 billion company to a $68 billion powerhouse. This kind of pop recalls earlier golden eras for tech listings, when investor demand turned software stocks into rocket ships.

Such hunger does not come out of thin air. The pitch is simple: Figma is sticky. It lands inside companies and spreads. A designer invites an engineer, the engineer invites a product manager, the product manager invites the whole marketing team. Before long, an entire workflow sits inside Figma’s workspace. Companies rely on that collaboration. Churn is low. Growth compounds. The firm has over 95 percent of Fortune 500 companies on its roster. These are the kind of stats that keep venture capital firms like Greylock, Index Ventures, Kleiner Perkins, and Sequoia Capital smiling. Those early investors made big bets on Figma. Thursday’s IPO rewarded their patience.

What does Figma do next? Field says the same thing he has said since day one: keep listening to users, keep improving the product, stay focused on the mission. In its second quarter preview, Figma said it expects revenue between $247 million and $250 million, with operating income up to $12 million. The figures show that the company is still growing at a strong pace while staying profitable, a balance that public investors crave.

There are still risks ahead. Big technology companies like Google and Microsoft are both customers and potential rivals. They have the resources to build competing tools if they see an opening. Adobe remains a giant with vast reach. And the broader software market is never static. User expectations change quickly. Tools that feel fresh today can feel stale tomorrow if innovation stalls.

Yet Figma’s story so far suggests it thrives under pressure. When the Adobe deal collapsed, the company did not stumble. Instead, it pushed harder to prove its worth. When remote work spread faster than anyone expected, Figma’s model fit the moment. It became an operating system for creative teamwork in a world that now demands flexibility and speed.

I think about Iniobong each time I read about Figma’s success. People like her sits at their desk with three teammates halfway across the globe, each typing, clicking, and sketching ideas together. They see the same shapes, the same fonts. They erase and redraw in real time. The old world of design, where collaboration happened in disjointed emails and huge file attachments, feels distant now.

Figma did not invent online collaboration. It made it feel smooth and powerful for creative teams. That small promise reshaped how thousands of companies think about building products and brands. And now, it has given Wall Street something rare: a fresh reminder that young companies with strong ideas, strong revenue, and strong culture can still win big.

The IPO is not the end of Figma’s story. It is a bright, loud milestone that invites new scrutiny and new expectations. Figma will have to navigate the demands of quarterly earnings and restless investors. It will need to prove that its growth is not a lucky streak but a durable force in the world of design.

If it succeeds, Figma could stand as one of the defining software companies of its generation. A tool that turned simple browser-based sketching into a global movement worth tens of billions of dollars. A company that bet on the cloud before it was trendy, trusted designers to bring their colleagues along, and turned a canceled buyout into a reason to double down on independence.

Some startups exit quietly. Figma’s public debut arrived with confetti on the trading floor and a clear message to anyone watching: collaboration is powerful, design belongs to everyone, and this company plans to keep drawing its future in bold lines.