Adobe Agrees To Buy Figma for About $20 Billion (bloomberg.com) 41
Adobe agreed to buy software design startup Figma in a deal valued at about $20 billion to help it expand tools for creative professionals. From a report: The deal announced by Adobe, which is a mix of half cash and half stock, confirms an earlier Bloomberg report and would mark the biggest ever takeover of a private software company, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Adobe shares fell 13% as the market opened in New York, the biggest decline in more than two years.
Figma, which allows customers to collaborate on software as they build it, saw demand jump during the pandemic while more people worked remotely. The company expanded its customer base in recent years from software designers at big companies like Airbnb, Google, Herman Miller and Kimberly-Clark -- to also include individuals building lightweight games, maps and presentations. It has also attracted a loyal student following. The combination benefits "literally anybody who is a knowledge worker," said Adobe Chief Executive Officer Shantanu Narayen, in an interview. Adobe, which had been a Wall Street favorite for more than a decade, has been pummeled in the tech downturn, seeing its shares lose more than a third of their value since the start of the year. Investors have become increasingly skeptical about the dominance of Adobe's line of software for design professionals, which makes up about 60% of its revenue.
Figma, which allows customers to collaborate on software as they build it, saw demand jump during the pandemic while more people worked remotely. The company expanded its customer base in recent years from software designers at big companies like Airbnb, Google, Herman Miller and Kimberly-Clark -- to also include individuals building lightweight games, maps and presentations. It has also attracted a loyal student following. The combination benefits "literally anybody who is a knowledge worker," said Adobe Chief Executive Officer Shantanu Narayen, in an interview. Adobe, which had been a Wall Street favorite for more than a decade, has been pummeled in the tech downturn, seeing its shares lose more than a third of their value since the start of the year. Investors have become increasingly skeptical about the dominance of Adobe's line of software for design professionals, which makes up about 60% of its revenue.
Like Facebook bought... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Like Facebook bought... (Score:4, Insightful)
I doubt they would kill it any time soon. More like they would just rename it Adobe Figma and make it more expensive. But they'd move the best devs over to some other product they hope to keep running long term, put any functionality Figma users care about into another product, and phase it out gradually while kind of sort of supporting it (but continuing to charge full price.)
Regardless, allowing this kind of consolidation is harmful to consumers... so it will probably happen.
Re: Like Facebook bought... (Score:3)
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so it will probably happen.
You have may more faith in our regulators than I do. The only way this gets blocked is if the money isn't sent to the right people.
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You have may more faith in our regulators than I do.
You may have read that comment wrong. I said the opposite of what you thought I said.
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Regardless, allowing this kind of consolidation is harmful to consumers...
It's long past time we broke these mega corps up into more manageable chunks. Ma Bell has been pulling herself back together like a liquid metal terminator and she's not even the worst of them.
Libertarians: The free market only works when there is healthy competition, and unregulated or under-regulated markets tend naturally towards monopoly. If you believe capitalism and the free market, you should be demanding heavy-handed government intervention to prevent this kind of large-scale consolidation in the
Re: Like Facebook bought... (Score:2)
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Figma should be perfectly safe.
Adobe spent a ton of money and lots of time on Adobe XD which is the largest and most direct competitor to Figma. But Figma won over Microsoft and Amazon and a lot of other large enterprise customers. Adobe tried to push XD on their customers and their customers built their design departments around Figma instead.
Adobe is just admitting defeat. The reason XD failed wasn't because of Adobe corporate meddling like pushing micropayments or something. And companies already h
This sounds monopoly... (Score:5, Insightful)
Adobe already has Illustrator....and CC to collaborate upon.
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The most direct competitor might be Adobe XD...which our design team moved away from to Figma last year.
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Sometime in the 90's iirc, they weren't allowed to acquire Freehand from Aldus? because they already had illustrator. No one seemed to care when they got it when they bought Macromedia in the 2000's.
ahh so that explains it (Score:3)
We've been getting quite a few Figma slashvertisements lately. Now we know why.
Time to find another tool... (Score:4, Insightful)
They'll just bundle it into their subscription suite and expect everybody to pay 10x more for it.
Re:Time to find another tool... (Score:5, Interesting)
Figma is now dead to me (Score:2)
Dear Universe, two words; "Aldus PageMaker". And no good ever really came from it other than to line Adobe's pockets even more. Figma is dead. Long live the Lich King Figma.
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Dear Universe, two words; "Aldus PageMaker". And no good ever really came from it other than to line Adobe's pockets even more.
Or 4 words: "Macromedia Dreamweaver and Fireworks".
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Oh sweet hell, no? (Score:3)
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Wait. You don't think Adobe can compete ... in the creative tools space?
I don't even know where to begin...
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Is Adobe jealous of how much Oracle is despised? (Score:2)
Re:Is Adobe jealous of how much Oracle is despised (Score:4, Insightful)
You spend $10 million to buy up a competitor and let them die. You don't spend $20 billion to do that.
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If it is only worth $10 million, then it isn't a competitor.
wow (Score:3)
Are Adobe's execs and board on meth?
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Of course not. They're coked up from swimming in all their ill-gotten cash money.
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Microsoft (Score:2)
I'm kind of surprised that Microsoft didn't make a play at Figma and try to buy them to incorporate it as a feature within Teams or Office 365 suite. They have Visio and Project but if they had Figma it would have really sweetened the pot.
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I hope that MS helps to block this. This purchase is more than a textbook example of anticompetitive behavior
Bye-bye Figma. (Score:2)
...
And 20 Billion? Seriously? So they bought a minority stake at 20 billion eval and bought control to inflate the numbers.
I don't trust Adobe and they are right up there with M$ and 0r4cle when it comes to trust I would place in them.
adios (Score:3)
ADA? (Score:2)
Doesn't this mean that because Adobe is such a big company that they will be forced to add accessibility to figma?
Right now it doesn't support the blind at all, and that seems intentional when you look at the overall design.
Overheard at Adobe HQ ... (Score:2)
"So, Bob, we have a real problem. Adobe XD sucks balls and no one uses it. What are we gonna do?"
"Well, Andy, let's not try to actually make a decent UX design tool on our own, let's just buy Figma or Sketch, instead. Then we can take the best parts of that, mess it up by adding the Adobe magic, add it to CC and charge a shitload for it, and done. One competitor gone. Cool?"
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Instead of complaining on Slashdot, complain to the FTC. Don't forget to also write your congress critter and encourage others to do the same.
Never seen software as slow as Figma (Score:2)
No wonder Adobe is buying it.
Oh dammit... (Score:2)
I just discovered Figma last week,and now it's a bad deal. On to the next...