Adobe agreed to buy collaboration-software company Figma for around $20 billion, in the technology giant’s largest acquisition. Adobe, which will pay for the company using roughly half cash, half stock, unveiled the deal with its quarterly results, which it pulled forward from a planned afternoon announcement after The Wall Street Journal began inquiring about an acquisition Wednesday.
Figma specializes in cloud-based collaboration tools that help teams create and build web applications. Figma, based in San Francisco, was founded in 2011. Its products are akin to digital whiteboards in which designers and engineers can share design iterations and annotate them with feedback and suggestions.
The closely held, venture-backed company was last valued at around $10 billion in June 2021, according to PitchBook.
Adobe Chief Executive Shantanu Narayen noted in an interview that everything we see on screens starts as a concept, which Figma’s FigJam product allows people to generate collaboratively and remotely.
“When you go to engage with a mobile application on the web, somebody has to design that and then translate that into code,” he said. “That’s what Adobe and Figma can do.”
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