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Figma managed something rare in today’s market: it survived a failed Adobe acquisition, stayed independent, and went public on its own terms. But its post-IPO performance tells a more complex story about startup exits in 2025.
“This is a little bit of a meme stock,” said Jai Das, president and partner at Sapphire Ventures, on this week’s episode of Equity. Das joined Rebecca Bellan to break down what Figma’s IPO really signals about the current climate for startup exits.
With more than a dozen IPOs under his belt including MuleSoft, Square, and Box, Das knows what a strong debut looks like. Figma’s IPO was 40x oversubscribed and briefly surged to $125 per share before settling closer to $90. Despite impressive financials, Das cautioned that fundamentals weren’t the only force at play.
“The price of shares is driven a little bit by cash flow and earnings, but a lot of it is also driven by human behavior, what people know, what people talk about,” he said.
In other words, piping hot hype.
While Figma stands out, Das noted that most of 2025’s big exits look very different. In AI, M&A has been dominated by acqui-hires rather than product acquisitions. Google reportedly paid $2.7 billion just to hire Character.AI’s team, and Microsoft, Amazon, and others have made similar moves, prioritizing talent over technology.
Listen to the full episode to hear:
- What Figma’s post-IPO stock movement signals to the rest of the market.
- Why AI exits today focus more on talent than tech and whether that’s sustainable.
- Where Jai sees early promise beyond AI, from defense tech to SpaceTech and crypto infrastructure.
Equity will be back Friday with our weekly news roundup, so stay tuned.
Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast, produced by Theresa Loconsolo, and posts every Wednesday and Friday.
Subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.
Rebecca Bellan is a senior reporter at TechCrunch, where she covers Tesla and Elon Musk’s broader empire, autonomy, AI, electrification, gig work platforms, Big Tech regulatory scrutiny, and more. She’s one of the co-hosts of the Equity podcast and writes the TechCrunch Daily morning newsletter. Previously, she covered social media for Forbes.com, and her work has appeared in Bloomberg CityLab, The Atlantic, The Daily Beast, Mother Jones, i-D (Vice) and more. Rebecca has invested in Ethereum.
Theresa Loconsolo is an audio producer at TechCrunch focusing on Equity, the network’s flagship podcast. Before joining TechCrunch in 2022, she was one of 2 producers at a four-station conglomerate where she wrote, recorded, voiced and edited content, and engineered live performances and interviews from guests like lovelytheband. Theresa is based in New Jersey and holds a bachelors degree in Communication from Monmouth University.
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