Figma, the OpenAI competitor, is closing in on its own blockbuster IPO, in which it seeks to raise up to 1.5 billion through a public offering that should occur in 2025. This cloud-based design platform, which has a team-friendly user interface and has wide usage within enterprise groups, has submitted its S-1 filings to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, with an eye towards listing on the New York Stock Exchange with the ticker symbol of FIG.
The financials of Figma attract a strong growth story. In 2024, the firm achieved $749 million revenue, a 48 percent yearly growth. Though reporting a net loss of $732 million, mostly as a result of a one off employee stock options charge, it regained its composure to record a Q1 2025 profit of $44.9 million on an equivalent revenue of $228.2 million, virtually tripling its net gain compared to that earned in the same period last year.
These outcomes are positive and enhance the confidence of the investors and create a powerful story of an independent value that is independent of the scheduled acquisition by Adobe.
Its planned $1.5 billion IPO would actually tie or surpass the largest fintech IPO of 2025 (CoreWeave) and would be one of the largest offerings in tech this year. Figma, which has a valuation of $12.5 billion after a recent tender offer, is a portfolio company of the best venture firms around: Sequoia, Andreessen Horowitz, Greylock, and Kleiner Perkins. The prestigious underwriting group which reaffirms the institutional trust is Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, Allen & Co and J.P. Morgan.
The events leading up to the IPO of Figma took the form of antitrust inquiry. Adobe rejoined the fray of buying outfits in 2022 with an announcement that it had planned to purchase Figma to the tune of 20 billion. This acquisition would fail due to regulatory protest by the EU and UK in late 2023.
The separation left Figma with a termination fee of 12.5 million dollars by Adobe but it also validated its worth as a high-growth standalone company. The company will increase its presence in the market by going public with their new freshly gained autonomy and investor support.
Importantly, Figma is looking into widening its product range in order to enhance long-term innovation and differentiation. In its S-1, it also features new services such as building web pages, add-ons to coding with artificial intelligence, drawing on devices, and AI transaction handling on servers. The platform has recently been updated to include AI-guided tools and features such as background removal, auto-layout ideas, generative layers of text, and the ability to write code, which harks on a developing workflow of product and design teams
CEO, Dylan Field, clarified that these AI investments could have an implication on purchase efficiency, but they lead to competitiveness in a long-term design software market.
Figma has a strong user base with 13 million monthly active users and almost 95 percent of fortune 500 companies among others. A huge adoption rate indicates that Figma has stepped out of a startup disruptor and into an enterprise staple. Gross margins of the company as announced at 91% and the strengthening profit growth path are behind the belief that it is able to grow sustainably in public markets.
Still there are hurdles. As Figma scales it will become more competitive with both AI-first design products such as Lovable, and also incumbents such as Adobe in a post-deal fallout. Speed, real-time collaboration and AI innovation are key to continue to differentiate and become one of the leading lights in an ever more competitive design ecosystem.
Market conditions are also not left behind. Whereas, tech IPOs have stabilized after the previous market volatility flowed into, larger economic or regulatory changes, such as new trade tensions, can also impact sentiment. Yet, the IPO of Figma comes at the strategic time when investors turn back to the high-growth enterprise software listings.
Provided that Figma manages to attract and raise a whopping amount of funds (1.5 billion dollars) and maintains its upward trend, it can enter the public market with a bang. To the employees, it tightens down liquidity and credibility. It is an extremely attractive pure-play SaaS growth story with momentum and monetization, as far as the investors are concerned. With Figma becoming a publicly traded company, however, it has a chance to demonstrate that freestanding AI-driven design platforms do not necessarily die after being acquired, especially considering that they could usher a new wave of creativity in designing software.
