Figma takes on all of the competition in the age of AI

With all of the new AI entrants into the UX tools space, many influencers have been proclaiming for months on end that “Figma is dead”. As the co-founder of a design agency, Fuego UX, we utilize Figma on every client project. I can assure you it is not yet on its death bed, but that is beside the point. At their annual Config conference this week, Figma announced a number of new products and features aimed at integrating AI prototyping, website publishing, and visual design capabilities directly into their platform, effectively silencing critics. Figma is expanding its competitive scope beyond new AI tools to challenge nearly all major design tools.

Along with Figma Make, which competes with Lovable, Subframe, UX Pilot, Bolt, V0 and other generative prototyping tools, Figma also announced a few more products aimed at other competitors:

Figma Sites will finally allow designers to publish sites directly from Figma and is squarely aimed at Webflow and Framer users.

Figma Buzz takes on Canva with the ability to easily and quickly scale more marketing centric designs.

Figma Draw, taking on Adobe including Adobe Illustrator for branding and visual design needs.

What does this all mean for Figma users?

First of all, it means a much better user experience for Figma’s core users across Product and UX teams. The product design workflow is increasingly centralized within Figma, eliminating the need to switch between numerous disparate tools as most functionalities are now integrated and operate smoothly together. Figma has a history of listening to users and refining the user interface and workflow to be exceptionally intuitive. They have clearly listened to their fanatical users while developing these new products.

Figma was undoubtedly feeling the pressure of AI tools and the hype around them. It is worth noting that the hype about these smaller competitors “killing Figma” was largely exaggerated, given their limited resources compared to Figma’s. Figma also likely sees huge demand for AI features from users who want to speed up the ideation and design process. Figma Make seems like a solid step in the right direction to bring these generative AI tools into the product. 
Ever since the Adobe and Figma deal fell through 1.5 years ago, both Figma and Adobe realized that they quickly would have to put the gloves back on and become ruthless competitors. Figma Draw is a big step into capturing revenue from Figma users who still retain Adobe licenses.

As no-code website publishing tools like Webflow and Framer continue to grow, Figma knew they needed to compete. They likely have an advantage since their publishing tool is now integrated directly with their design environment. Also, Webflow has moved away from the “No-code” marketing language and is still a far less intuitive tool to use than Figma.

What is next for Figma? When will they die?

Here’s where it becomes very interesting, in my opinion. To quote The Dark Knight, “You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain,” seems appropriate in this case. Today, Figma is widely recognized as the go-to product design tool. Many Fortune 500 teams across UX, product, and even dev are in some part of the tool daily. However, this could change in the future as they inch closer to their IPO. I believe the rush to IPO is partly driven by the pace of change and disruption in software these days, and investors want to secure their payout before any serious threats emerge. The real risk to Figma is that going public will likely lead to price increases across the product, and the pace of the price increases will only grow after the IPO.

If we gaze into the future, I see a few possibilities for Figma. On one end of the spectrum they could become the next monopoly design software (a crown formerly held by Adobe) as they have to charge more to maintain growth, support all of the new features, and appease their shareholders. On the other end of the spectrum lies the possibility that they end up facing the same fate as Sketch and Invision, should an AI centric or more intuitive/collaborative tool emerge and steal their users. For now, recent product launches and feature updates strongly position Figma as the leading product design tool for many years to come.