The CEO talks about the future of the design tool 'Figma' whose acquisition plan by Adobe has been scrapped. What will the 150 billion yen paid by Adobe be used for?
The design tool '
Figma's CEO on moving on after failed Adobe merger - The Verge
https://www.theverge.com/2024/2/16/24075126/figma-ceo-dylan-field-interview-after-adobe
Figma is a tool that allows multiple people to edit at the same time, create product prototypes, and share ideas. In June 2023, Google and Figma announced a partnership to provide products free of charge to children in Japan and the United States, and they are also focusing on education.
It was announced in September 2022 that Figma would be acquired by Adobe. The acquisition price was announced to be 20 billion dollars (about 3 trillion yen), and attention was focused on the large-scale acquisition plan.
Adobe acquires the design tool 'Figma' for over 2 trillion yen, the Figma brand is scheduled to continue - GIGAZINE
However, Adobe's acquisition of Figma has been criticized as ``a plan to eliminate competitors and monopolize the market,'' and has been cited by the US Department of Justice and EU antitrust authorities as violating antitrust laws. A related investigation will be carried out.
In November 2023, the UK Competition and Markets Authority announced a preliminary finding that ``Adobe's acquisition of Figma may hinder market competition.'' Adobe seems to have proposed measures such as ``not including Figma in the Creative Cloud package'' and ``selling Adobe XD,'' a competing service to Figma, in order to eliminate suspicions of violating antitrust laws. In December 2018, it was officially decided to abandon the acquisition and pay a contract termination fee of $1 billion (approximately 150 billion yen).
Adobe abandons acquisition of Figma due to lack of regulatory approval, plans to pay Figma a $1 billion termination fee - GIGAZINE
According to Figma CEO Dylan Field, the $1 billion paid by Adobe will be used to fund ``strategic acquisitions to expand Figma's business.'' In addition, in response to The Verge's question, ``Do you plan to go public in the next few years?'', he answered, ``The path that venture companies take is either to be acquired or to go public. We have already explored all possible acquisition options.'
Furthermore, when asked, ``Is there a possibility of a business partnership with Adobe in the future?'', he answered, ``(The idea of a business partnership with Adobe) is a good one.I'm a big fan of the people who work at Adobe. Figma and Adobe wanted to learn more about how Adobe builds products and services the market at scale.''The first conversation between Figma and Adobe was, ``We wanted to form a partnership.'' What can we do? We don't have any plans yet, but we have a lot of enthusiasm for continuing that exploration,' hinting at the possibility of collaborating with Adobe in some way. .
In addition, CEO Field cited AI-related functions such as ``a function to design products using AI'' and ``a function to streamline tasks using AI'' as functions that he is considering adding to Figma. On the other hand, he is reluctant to build his own AI model, saying that ``using existing models such as GPT-4 is sufficient.''
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in Software, Posted by log1o_hf