The web-focused collaborative design tool, Figma, originally announced plans to be acquired by Adobe in September of 2022. However, just over a year later they and their prospective partner Adobe have announced that they are giving up and going their separate ways. As part of the canceled deal Adobe will pay a termination fee of $1 Billion dollars to Figma.
In an Interview with The Verge, Adobe general counsel Dana Rao states that the concern wasn’t the current state of the two companies. More-so the concern was that this would prevent future competition in the design space. Both Adobe and Figma are under the impression that there isn’t significant overlap between customers of their respective products. However, this acquisition would have effectively turned that Venn diagram into a circle.
Adobe own attempts to provide Figma-like functionality stalled as they halted future development of their Adobe XD product.
