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Technology|This Start-Up’s $20 Billion Sale Died. It Came Fighting Back.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/31/technology/figma-ipo.html
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Figma, which makes a design platform, was on the verge of a big payday before regulators quashed the sale. On Thursday, it went public, with its stock opening up 158 percent.
By Natallie Rocha and Michael J. de la Merced
Natallie Rocha reported from San Francisco, and Michael de la Merced from London.
July 31, 2025Updated 2:39 p.m. ET
Three years ago, Figma, a technology start-up that provides a design platform, was on the cusp of a major payday.
The San Francisco-based company had struck a deal to sell itself to the software giant Adobe for a whopping $20 billion. But the sale unraveled under the scrutiny of European Union, British and American regulators, vaporizing Figma’s potential windfall and leaving the company to pick up the pieces.
On Thursday, Figma bounced back — and then some. The company went public on the New York Stock Exchange, with its shares opening at $85, more than two and a half times its initial public offering price of $33. That put Figma’s market capitalization at $49.8 billion, more than double the $20 billion that Adobe had offered it.
Figma’s stock “pop” — Wall Street lingo for how much a stock jumps on its first day of trading — was an eye-watering 158 percent, far above the midteens percentage rise that companies and their underwriters typically aim for.
“The moments of the past kind of flash through your brain, how you got here, but also just excitement about the future is so palpable,” Dylan Field, a Figma co-founder and the company’s chief executive, said in an interview after ringing the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange. “We have so much ahead to build.”
The I.P.O. instantly turned Mr. Field, 33, into the latest tech billionaire, with his stake in Figma worth more than $4.6 billion.
