Under the shadow of tariffs, Figma, a rising star in the software sector, wants to land in US stocks and is expected to rekindle the US IPO boom

The Zhitong Finance App learned that Figma, a startup software company focusing on application design and collaborative software development, has secretly submitted an initial public offering (IPO) application on the US stock market. At this point, its merger and acquisition plan with popular creative software developers such as Photoshop and Illustrator — US software giant Adobe has been aborted for over a year. The San Francisco-based software company announced in a blog post on Tuesday local time that it has submitted a draft listing registration statement to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Figma's valuation reached approximately $12.5 billion in the 2024 round of financing.

Figma, which can be called the strongest new force in the global software industry, is applying for a US stock listing transaction at this moment, which is expected to reignite the enthusiasm of global capital to invest in the US stock IPO market, and may even set off a new round of investment in US technology stocks such as Microsoft, Google, and Nvidia, which have fallen into a wave of sell-off. Currently, US President Trump's aggressive equal tariff policy for the world has caused the US IPO market to fall into a state of paralysis in funding, and Wall Street investment banks are struggling. The listing plans of star technology companies such as Klarna Group Plc, Chime, Cerebras Systems, and eToro Group Ltd., have all been suspended, and these companies have announced the temporary suspension of the US stock IPO process.

According to information, Figma, a startup focused on application and website design software and collaborative software development, maintained its momentum after ending the “Century Merger” with Adobe at the end of 2023 due to anti-monopoly pressure from the regulatory authorities. Figma then focused on improving the utility of existing products for software engineers and web and platform designers, with a focus on launching a software tool ecosystem called “Dev Mode” (Dev Mode) to promote collaboration between professional software developers and website and platform designers.

According to a company spokesperson last month, the number of Figma employees has increased on a large scale from 500 in early 2022 to 1,600.

According to public information, Figma, a startup software company from the US, provides a series of software tool ecosystems that are critical for designers and software developers to meet the needs of increasingly diverse application scenarios.

For example, Figma Design is mainly used to create, share, and test the design of digital products such as websites and mobile apps, and supports real-time collaboration; FigJam is an online whiteboard tool platform, suitable for brainstorming, meeting minutes, flowchart drawing, etc.; Dev Mode aims to simplify collaboration between design and development to help web and platform designers and senior software developers communicate projects more efficiently; Figma Slides is mainly used to assist in the production of presentations, supporting seamless integration with design files and covering automatic layout Go to advanced properties to make presentation design more professional and efficient.

With the full rise of remote work and cross-departmental collaboration, the demand for design collaboration tools continues to grow at a strong pace. The real-time collaboration and cloud platform characteristics of Figma's software give it a clear competitive advantage in the design tool market. Together, the software products described above form Figma's design collaboration software ecosystem and are widely used in UI/UX design, product management, application development, and marketing.

As of 2024, Figma has more than 4 million users, and its B-side customers even cover well-known technology companies such as Microsoft, social networking platforms X, Dropbox, Stripe, Slack, and GitHub. In June 2024, Figma's ARR (annual recurring revenue) reached $700 million, an increase of 35% over the previous year. Figma's performance is expected to continue to grow rapidly in the next few years with its continuously innovative product ecosystem, strong user base, and continuous market expansion pace.