Design startup Figma eyes Wall Street: Files confidentially for IPO after $20B Adobe acquisition collapse

Design platform Figma has confidentially filed paperwork with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to go public, the company announced Tuesday.

The filing dropped the same day Figma caught heat on social media after sending a cease-and-desist letter to Lovable, a rising AI dev tool startup, over its use of the term “Dev Mode.”

This potential IPO comes more than a year after Adobe and Figma agreed to terminate their $20 billion acquisition, following regulatory pressure in the U.K. The deal, first announced in 2022, unraveled in late 2023. Adobe paid Figma a $1 billion breakup fee.

“Figma, Inc. has confidentially submitted a draft Registration Statement on Form S-1 with the SEC relating to the proposed initial public offering of its Class A common stock. This is not an offer to sell or solicitation of an offer to buy any securities,” the company said in a blog post.

Figma added, “The number of shares and the price range for a potential public offering have not yet been determined. Any future offers, solicitations or offers to buy, or sales of securities will be made following the SEC’s completion of its review process, in accordance with the registration requirements of the Securities Act.”

Figma, based in San Francisco, is widely used by product teams to build and collaborate on digital designs. Its browser-based software became a go-to tool for companies prototyping websites and apps. In a 2024 tender offer, Figma was valued at $12.5 billion.

“There are two paths that venture-funded startups go down,” Figma co-founder and CEO Dylan Field told The Verge last year. “You either get acquired or you go public. And we explored thoroughly the acquisition route.”

Figma’s move comes at an uncertain time for tech IPOs. After a freeze that began in late 2021, hopes of a rebound under the Trump administration were high, thanks to talk of looser regulations.

But this month alone, Klarna and StubHub put their IPO plans on hold following market jitters tied to Trump’s tariff announcements. Chime, which had filed confidentially, also paused its own listing. Car-sharing platform Turo pulled its prospectus in February after three years in IPO limbo, according to a report from CNBC

Founded in 2012 by Dylan Field and Evan Wallace, Figma built its reputation around letting teams brainstorm and iterate in real time. Customers include Zoom, Airbnb, and Coinbase.

The startup is backed by a who’s who of Silicon Valley investors: Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital, Durable Capital, Index Ventures, Greylock Partners, and Kleiner Perkins. As of early last year, Figma was generating around $600 million in annual revenue.