Figma Hired 500 Employees Since Adobe Acquisition Announced

Brody Ford, Bloomberg News

(Bloomberg) -- Design startup Figma Inc.’s headcount has grown roughly 60% since it announced merger plans with Adobe Inc. in September 2022, a sign the company hasn’t been standing still while it waits for the deal to close.

“It’s been a very exciting year here at Figma,” Chief Executive Officer Dylan Field said Tuesday in an interview on Bloomberg Television. “We’ve added about 500 employees since the deal was announced.”

As regulatory pressure in the US and Europe has delayed the $20 billion takeover by creative software giant Adobe, Figma has worked to illustrate momentum as an independent company. On Tuesday, the digital-design startup announced new generative artificial intelligence features in its brainstorming tool, FigJam. Figma uses OpenAI’s GPT-4 model for the new feature, though it could reconsider that choice in the future, Field said.

Figma has also opened new offices in London and Singapore, hosted a June user conference in San Francisco, and now has more than 1,300 employees, according to a spokesperson.

The Adobe acquisition is scheduled to be completed by the end of March, though it may be hard to conclude the purchase in that time frame with at least one of the regulatory agencies likely to challenge the deal, Bloomberg Intelligence antitrust analyst Jennifer Rie wrote in September. Adobe may owe the design startup a $1 billion breakup fee if the transaction takes longer than that and the deal collapses, according to the merger documents.

Read More: Adobe’s Focus Isn’t Figma Any More as Regulator Lawsuit Looms

When asked whether there was a chance the deal could fall apart, Field said, “We’re very optimistic, and very excited about what we can do with Adobe.” He added that his company can learn a lot from Adobe’s recent advancements in artificial intelligence.

--With assistance from Caroline Hyde, Ed Ludlow and Paayal Zaveri.