Figma's top VCs are sitting on $24 billion worth of stock after massive IPO pop

CNBC

3 days ago

You can almost smell the bubbly wafting across Silicon Valley.
Following Figma's blockbuster market debut on Thursday, four of the most iconic names in venture capital — Index Ventures, Greylock, Kleiner Perkins and Sequoia — are collectively sitting on roughly $24 billion worth of the design software vendor's stock.
Until recently, there's been little reason to celebrate. From late 2021, when soaring inflation and rising rates pushed investors out of risky assets, until the middle of 2025, tech IPOs were few and far between, and many of the companies that managed to make it out failed to impress Wall Street. That's left venture firms with scarce returns for the pension funds, endowments and foundations they rely on for funding.
The mood is noticeably brighter these days as the Nasdaq trades near a record.
Figma is the latest, and perhaps most high-profile, tech company to hit the market, and Wall Street appears to want more. After raising its price range this week and then pricing $1 above the top of that range, Figma shares soared 250% in their first day on the New York Stock Exchange.
Investors will admit they got lucky. Figma was supposed to get acquired for $20 billion by Adobe, an agreement the two companies forged in 2022. But the following year, the transaction collapsed after U.K. regulators said the tie-up would harm competition.
Figma is now worth more than three times what Adobe was going to pay, closing on Thursday with a market cap of almost $68 billion.
CEO Dylan Field, who co-founded the company in 2012, owns a stake worth over $6 billion. Danny Rimer, a partner at Index Ventures and Figma board member, wrote in a blog post on Thursday that the failed acquisition came with "intense pressure and a spotlight few founders ever face."
"Dylan remained his usual grounded, transparent self," wrote Rimer, whose firm first bet on Figma in 2013 and is the biggest shareholder, with $7.2 billion worth of stock in the company. "When the deal fell through a year later, he didn't flinch. He turned the page and got right back to building."
Figma's offering raised $1.2 billion, with two-thirds of the proceeds going to existing investors. Other than the small slug of stock each of the venture firms sold at $33, the rest of their holdings are subject to a lock-up period, meaning all of the current value is currently just on paper. The vast majority of outstanding shares are locked up for 180 days, so big stock sales can't happen until January.
Stablecoin issuer Circle went public in June, and is the other tech IPO that's generated hefty returns for VCs recently. The shares were initially sold at $31 each and are now trading at over $183, leaving investment firms IDG Capital, General Catalyst, Accel and Breyer Capital with a combined stake of close to $12 billion. Circle doubled on its first day of trading.
While IPO pops generate a lot of buzz and dramatically lift the value of investors' holdings, they're not universally celebrated. Bill Gurley of Benchmark has for years been a critic of such first-day gains, arguing that bankers leave money on the table for the company while handing deeply discounted stock to new investors.
In a series of posts on X on Thursday, Gurley described the Figma outcome as "expected & fully intentional."
"Who benefits?" Gurley wrote, shortly after the stock began trading. "The large clients of the investment banks (who return the favor paying for other services). They bought it at $33 last night and can sell it today for over $90."
Still, the exuberance in the market is welcome news for most VCs.
After a record year in 2021, which saw 155 U.S. venture-backed IPOs raise $60.4 billion, every year since has been relatively dismal, according to data from University of Florida finance professor Jay Ritter. There were 13 such offerings in 2022, followed by 18 in 2023 and 30 last year, collectively raising $13.3 billion, Ritter's data shows.
The slowdown followed the Federal Reserve's aggressive rate-hiking campaign in 2022, meant to slow crippling inflation. As the lower-growth environment extended into years two and three, venture firms faced increasing pressure to return cash to investors.
Earlier this year, the exit environment was still looking ominous. After President Donald Trump's announcement of sweeping tariffs in April, companies including online lender Klarna and ticket marketplace StubHub delayed their IPO plans. The Nasdaq plummeted 10% in a week, as investors fretted over the potential of rising import costs and supply chain disruptions.
But Trump later walked back his threats and the trade deals he's landed have resulted in lower tariffs than previously feared.
CoreWeave, a provider of artificial intelligence infrastructure, went public just before Trump's initial plans were announced. The stock is now almost triple its IPO price, closing on Thursday at $114.13, though that's down about 38% from its high in June.
CoreWeave and Circle have both been big wins for investors, with their market caps now at about $56 billion and $41 billion, respectively. Figma is worth even more.
Lynn Martin, president of the NYSE, told CNBC's "Squawk on the Street" on Thursday that she thinks the Figma offering "will open the floodgates."
Figma's early investors and big financial winners all published glowing blog posts about Field and the journey he's been on with the company that he started after dropping out of college in 2012.
"Figma's relentless focus on product, community, and craft has reshaped how the world designs," wrote Greylock's John Lilly in a post on Thursday. His firm led the $14 Series AI investment in 2015 and now owns a stake worth about $6.7 billion.
Kleiner Perkins led the $25 Series B, which was announced in 2018. Its holdings are now valued at $6 billion.
"The product was still early, but the love from its small community of users was unmistakable," wrote Kleiner partner Mamoon Hamid, in his post after the IPO. "We were convinced that Figma had the potential to fundamentally reshape how digital products would be designed, and knew we had to be part of it."
Two years later, venture powerhouse Sequoia stepped in to lead Figma's $40 million Series C round. Sequoia's Andrew Reed wrote at the time that the company had "the talent and culture to build an enduring, fundamental company."
On Thursday, with his firm's stake in Figma approaching $3.8 billion, Reed took to X for his congratulatory remarks.
"Congrats to the incredible @Figma team," Reed wrote. "The most creative, determined, imaginative, and positive group of people. I'm just so happy for all of your success."