What is the takeover about?
On September 15, 2022, Adobe announced that it has entered into a merger agreement to acquire Figma for $20 billion in cash and stock.
With Figma’s expected revenue for 2022 at $400 million, Adobe is effectively paying 50 times the revenue for Figma at a time when the stock market is tanking.
According to Adobe’s CEO, the combination of Adobe and Figma is transformational and will accelerate their vision for collaborative creativity.
What will happen to Figma?
Figma is a powerful collaborative prototyping tool, liked by many in the design industry. When the news first broke out, many were disappointed that a rising startup is being taken over by a big brand again, just like Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram or Google’s acquisition of Youtube.
However, Figma’s CEO has released a statement stressing that Adobe is committed to keeping Figma operating autonomously.
From Adobe’s perspective, Figma and FigJam are promising browser-based tools that Adobe never had. Figma caters mostly to the design community while FigJam appeals to anyone who requires a collaborative brainstorming tool.
Figma and FigJam can potentially open up Adobe into the collaboration software market. Moreover, Figma is more widely used than Adobe XD. It is unlikely that Adobe will kill Figma in favor of Adobe XD.
On the other hand, Figma will also benefit from Adobe’s technology in digital imaging, video, vector, 3D, AI, machine learning, etc.
What will happen to Adobe XD?
Adobe sent an email to Adobe Creative Cloud users on September 15, 2022. You can read the email below:
Dear Valued Customer,
We're writing to share some exciting news we announced today. Adobe has entered into a definitive merger agreement to acquire Figma, a leading web-first design platform for teams who build products together.
Figma and FigJam make it possible for all stakeholders designing interactive mobile and web applications to collaborate through multi-player workflows, sophisticated design systems and a rich extensible developer ecosystem.
While we have been reducing our investment in XD, we will continue to support it. We are excited about Figma's vision for the future of product design and the potential of our teams coming together to benefit our customers. After the transaction closes (expected in 2023), we will share more information.
Adobe has been reducing its investment in XD. It seems like Adobe may have a plan to sunset XD once the Figma deal has completely closed in 2023.
However, if you prefer using Adobe XD, there’s really no rush to migrate to Figma yet since Adobe will likely continue to support it in the near future.
Should you move to Penpot just yet?
Penpot is an open-source prototyping tool. It is a tiny competitor of Figma or Adobe XD. Some designers have been contemplating ditching both Figma and XD to migrate to Penpot.
If you feel comfortable using either Figma or Adobe XD, we don’t see any reasons to learn a new tool and make your life miserable by migrating all your existing design templates to a new tool.
However, if you are an enthusiastic learner and would love to learn new things, just go ahead! And when you get familiar with Penpot, you can always switch between Penpot and Figma/ Adobe XD.
