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# Why Hasn’t Figma Shut Down Already?
- URL: https://elnahla.com/why-hasnt-figma-shut-down-already/
- Published: 2026-10-27T14:27:59.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-27T14:27:59.000Z
- Author: Amr Elnahla
- Tags: Teardown

It has been a great 10 year run for Figma. It entered a market with an extraordinary solution for an important problem, and managed in short time to capture the attention and support of a huge community of designers, that helped spread it to thousands and thousands of companies around the world. Figma killed lesser competitors, survived ambitious ones, and seemed like it was going to win big with the Adobe acquisition, only for that to fail and it to [IPO](https://investor.figma.com/news-events/news/news-details/2025/Figma-Announces-Pricing-of-Initial-Public-Offering/default.aspx?ref=elnahla.com) on its own. It is now trading at a valuation of around [$12 billion](https://stockanalysis.com/stocks/fig/market-cap/?ref=elnahla.com), down from nearly [$68 billion](https://www.marketwatch.com/story/figma-prices-ipo-at-33-a-share-raising-1-2-billion-b8df6eca?ref=elnahla.com) at the close of its first trading day, and even below the [$20 billion](https://news.adobe.com/news/news-details/2023/adobe-and-figma-mutually-agree-to-terminate-merger-agreement?ref=elnahla.com) Adobe had offered to buy it for.

For all intents and purposes, I see Figma as dead. It will just take a few more years for it to disappear.

I was a Figma user from the moment it launched. On that day, I [reposted](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/amrelnahla%5Flooks-exciting-share-6078249215480315904-5fPs/?ref=elnahla.com) its announcement on LinkedIn with just two words, "Looks exciting." I was excited. It made a hella-smooth web application that felt like it visited us from the future, and it disrupted what's possible in the collaboration between designers and stakeholders. It saw the market, and rewrote its playbook, and for years maintained the goodwill of the community. To top it off, Figma barely strayed off mission, and largely speaking, remained focused and didn't fall into the enshitification traps.

I never drank the Figma Kool-Aid the way so many designers did. I thought it was brilliant software, but it also amplified an obsession with perfection that design teams hardly needed more of. The Figma file became a sacred bible: endless rounds of pixel polishing, meticulously maintained components, annotations, and reviews, as if the mockup were a product in its own right. But when the designs started moving across the engineering kanban boards, the real data and constraints exposed the gap between a perfect mockup and a workable product. Obviously, like it often is, the solution was more specs, more alignment, more meetings, more efforts to keep the two versions in sync, which I saw teams painstakingly do, only for the sync to fall apart in later minor and major iterations. Figma didn't invent the tension of whether the design or code was the source of truth, but by not solving this problem, and yet [normalizing](https://blog.nordcraft.com/no-figma-i-wont-fit-in-your-little-box?ref=elnahla.com) and scaling the new design workflow, it formalized the problem.

Then generative AI happened, at almost the worst possible time for Figma. Adobe had agreed to acquire it in September 2022, just two months before ChatGPT launched. Figma then spent 15 months in acquisition limbo before the deal collapsed due to [antitrust concerns](https://www.figma.com/blog/figma-adobe-abandon-proposed-merger/?ref=elnahla.com). I suspect Adobe sighed in relief and was more than happy to pay the $1 billion breakup fee, as it was clear back then Figma's future might be turbulent, even if it wasn't definitive yet what that future would be.

Figma's early AI efforts were shaky. In 2024, it had to pull its [Make Designs](https://www.figma.com/blog/inside-figma-a-retrospective-on-make-designs/?ref=elnahla.com) feature after it repeatedly generated designs resembling Apple's Weather app. And a year later, it tried again, [launching](https://www.figma.com/blog/config-2025-press-release/?ref=elnahla.com) Figma Make and Sites to bridge design and code, but both drew [serious](https://forum.figma.com/report-a-problem-6/figma-make-review-41779?ref=elnahla.com) [criticism](https://forum.figma.com/share-your-feedback-26/config-2025-figma-sites-is-here-let-s-hear-what-you-think-40303/index3.html?ref=elnahla.com) over their reliability and execution.

And then came Claude Opus 4.5 in November 2025 and GPT-5.2 in December. Suddenly, designing directly in code was a credible alternative to meticulously crafting mockups. The next nail in its coffin came when Anthropic launched Claude Design, and Figma's stock fell [6.9%](https://www.quiverquant.com/stock/FIG/historical-prices/?ref=elnahla.com) that day. Since then, the rapid advancement in OpenAI and Anthropic models all but sealed the fate of Figma, and chipped away the long-held assumption that software needs to be designed in one tool before being built in another.

Figma’s actual numbers might make an obituary look premature. While it reported [$370 million](https://investor.figma.com/financials/quarterly-results/?ref=elnahla.com) in Q2'26 revenue, up 48% YoY, and held $1.7 billion in cash and cash equivalents, those results can easily be a shadow from a darker future.

Death takes time because people, and organisations, move timidly and slowly. Existing projects need maintenance and stakeholders expect a familiar link. Someone who prefers another workflow may still need Figma to finish old projects, or be wary of the migration effort. Plus, usage lowers before subscription cancellations accelerate, until those older projects become too old and irrelevant to care about.

When extinction-level events happen in a market, the ripples take time to propagate. Apple introduced the iPhone in 2007, and four years later, Blackberry's Research in Motion reported [$19.9 billion](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1070235/000134100411000761/rim6k.htm?ref=elnahla.com) in annual revenue, up 33% YoY. It wasn't until 2016 that it announced it would stop developing hardware internally. An even longer afterlife was AOL's dial-up service, which it only ended in [September 2025](https://apnews.com/article/275a81f8a725619663437350b7c7ed36?ref=elnahla.com), showing yet again how continued existence is not continued importance. A customer base dependent on a product can outlast a product’s role in attracting the next generation of customers.

Figma is trying to escape that fate. Make can work with [production codebases](https://www.figma.com/blog/workflow-lab-deploying-designs-directly-with-figma-make/?ref=elnahla.com), [Code Layers](https://www.figma.com/blog/code-on-the-figma-canvas/?ref=elnahla.com) bring interactive code into designs, and [external agents](https://www.figma.com/blog/the-figma-canvas-is-now-open-to-agents/?ref=elnahla.com) can operate on its canvas. These are reasonable responses, but at best, they will help slow down the churn. They are the kind of features the VP of Sales asks for so his Account Managers can maintain their retention targets, not the kind of features that the users need or the industry is moving toward.

I still held out a faint glimmer of hope that Figma would figure this out, partly because I've always admired its underdog story. Then I saw its recent Figma Agent [launch ad](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTkrKqbsDec&ref=elnahla.com). One of the most absurd product announcements I've seen in years. When companies face an existential crisis, they tend to do one of three things: give up, hunker down and figure shit out, or pretend nothing is wrong and distract everyone with a spectacle. This ad felt like the epitome of the third. People dancing, an overwhelming sense of celebration, and extraordinary confidence. But celebrating what, exactly? The message seemed to be: "We're here! We're awesome! You're here! You're awesome! Let's be awesome together!" Great. But what are we actually doing? Where are we going? And why should anyone still need Figma to get there? I don't think it knows the answer, and it just hoped this ad would help stretch the LTV a bit longer.

Figma was once on the other side of this story. Five years before it launched, there was [InVision](https://www.fastcompany.com/91069936/why-invision-failed?ref=elnahla.com), which grew to become the darling of the design industry by turning static Photoshop and Sketch files into interactive prototypes that teams could share and discuss. By 2018, it had reached $100 million in ARR and a [$1.9 billion](https://techcrunch.com/2018/12/11/invision-valued-at-1-9-billion-picks-up-115-million-series-f/?ref=elnahla.com) valuation, more than 10 times Figma's valuation at the time. InVision produced documentaries, books, and podcasts, and cultivated this smug, preachy, self-important persona that I always found quite off-putting. But their core product still required designers to create the [designs elsewhere](https://www.fastcompany.com/91069936/why-invision-failed?ref=elnahla.com), then import them into InVision, and then have engineers rebuild them in code.

In a way, InVision was 3 steps. Figma disrupted them with 2 steps. And now generative AI is the 1 step disruption.

InVision's leadership, by former employees' accounts, underestimated Figma and were worried more about Adobe. By the time they recognized the threat, it was already too late. InVision announced its shutdown in January 2024, and closed shop in [December 31](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/invisionapp%5Finvision-services-shut-down-on-december-31-activity-7282040725469294593-PomL?ref=elnahla.com), further exemplifying how death runs on a delayed timeline.

Figma made InVision's prototyping step redundant. And now, generative AI threatens to do the same to Figma's separate design step. Why perfect a wishful picture of what the product should be when you can build and refine the product itself?

While Figma may survive this transition, InVision is a reminder that a company can lose its reason to exist years before it actually disappears. I for one, cannot see a path for it out of this, but I hope it has one massive trick up its sleeve.

*Disclaimer: The author does not own any individual shares, options, or financial positions in Figma, Adobe, or any competing software entities mentioned in this article. This piece is strictly for informational and analytical purposes and does not constitute financial or investment advice.*