Collaborative design software startup Figma had reportedly closed on a funding round led by a group of investors. The Bloomberg report calls this a “secondary share sale,” which involves both current and former employees, as well as other equity holders.
Who invested in this round?
Coatue Management, Alkeon Capital Management, and General Catalyst Partners invested in this round. Other investors who participated include the hedge fund SurgoCap Partners, Atlassian Corp., Fidelity Management & Research Co., Franklin Templeton’s Franklin Venture Partners and Iconiq, Sequoia Capital (which recently invested in Fireworks AI and Iconic AI), Thrive Capital, Greenoaks Capital Partners, Durable Capital Partners, Andreessen Horowitz (which invested in Hebbia and ElevenLabs), Kleiner Perkins, Apple Inc. executive Eddy Cue, Goanna Capital, and XN.
While the size of the round was not disclosed, Bloomberg reported that the company’s valuation accounts for $12.5 billion with this round.
The deal comes at a time when the San Francisco-based company is delivering ARR of over $700 million. It is projected to surpass $1 billion by next year, as per the source.
Figma AI features
Led by CEO Dylan Feld, Figma recently launched new AI features and a visual story-telling tool known as Figma Slides.
However, the rollout of its AI tools has had some setbacks and the company was forced to disable a new tool called “Make Design,” which uses Gen AI to create full-fledged application UIs for users based on natural language commands. The tool appears to have struggled to create original work.
The acquisition fiasco
Last year, Figma was a target of acquisition for Adobe for around $20 billion. However, after several months, the acquisition was called off claiming that there is no clear path to receive the necessary regulatory approval for the same.
Figma, the design platform
Founded in 2012, it offers a cloud-based platform for designing user interfaces for websites and applications. Its collaborative tools enable multiple stakeholders to work together and edit an interface at the same time. The platform also enables users to collect feedback from others who are participating in a project, such as software developers.
In addition, the company offers a range of no-code tools that can simplify the design of complex UI components without needing to write any software code to create them.
