Figma Makes Largest VC-Backed Market Debut in 4 Years

With an implied market capitalization of nearly $20 billion, design and product development platform Figma is now the largest venture-backed initial public offering (IPO) in terms of market cap for a technology firm in the United States.

It beats the market cap of Rivian, which went public in November 2021, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday (July 31). Figma is now also the largest venture-backed tech IPO since 2021 by the amount raised, or about $1.2 billion.

“Figma isn’t just any VC-backed tech IPO. It is a behemoth,” said Matt Kennedy, a senior strategist at Renaissance Capital, per the report. “There’s a very small list of VC-backed companies valued in the range of $20 billion.”

Figma makes a design collaboration tool that has 13 million monthly active users, including designers, developers, product managers, researchers, marketers and writers, according to its IPO prospectus.

The company was launched in 2012 by co-founder and CEO Dylan Field and co-founder Evan Wallace, who met as classmates at Brown University.

“Back then, designers worked by themselves in silos across different tools and products. Even if they wanted to design with others, the process was fragmented and made it hard to collaborate,” PYMNTS wrote July 23.

So, designers had to settle for simply emailing huge, marked up files to each other, a process that can lead to miscommunication among the project’s team.

Figma consolidated the process onto one platform. In 2023, it introduced Dev Mode, which lets developers translate designs more easily into coded products. Developers account for nearly a third of Figma’s monthly users.

Meanwhile, the second half of the year could see a rebound in IPO activity, according to investment banks Evercore and Stifel Financial.

Both banks’ executives said during earnings calls this week that an increase in activity in the markets could be fueled by a reduction in volatility and a relaxation of regulations by the White House.

Stifel CEO Ron Kruszewski said during the company’s earnings call that it is “seeing early signs of a broader IPO recovery and follow-on activity remain sponsor-driven, with private equity continuing to lead issuance.”