Adobe has long stood as the undisputed king of creative software. From Hollywood blockbusters and high-end advertising to visual effects, web design, and YouTube content — Adobe is everywhere. But that dominance has come with a dark side: hidden fees, customer exploitation, even a lawsuit from the U.S. government. For years, creatives felt trapped under Adobe’s monopoly.
And yet, in 2025, a twist emerged. A challenger rose — one born from Adobe’s own greed. That rival is Figma, now fresh off the largest IPO of the year. The irony? Adobe accidentally created the very company that now threatens its empire.
It all started when Adobe tried to buy Figma. On the surface, it looked like another acquisition in Adobe’s long history of swallowing up smaller rivals. But their intentions weren’t what you might expect. This wasn’t about synergy or innovation. It was about control — and killing competition.
Take 1994 for example. Back then, Aldus owned FreeHand, a strong competitor to Adobe Illustrator. Adobe swooped in to acquire Aldus, but not because it wanted two illustration tools. It wanted FreeHand dead. The FTC intervened, forcing Adobe to sell FreeHand and banning them from buying it back for ten years. But the moment the restriction expired, Adobe found a way. By acquiring Macromedia in 2005, they regained FreeHand — and slowly suffocated it into irrelevance. Users were outraged, sparking lawsuits and protests, but Adobe didn’t care. Their monopoly was growing stronger.
From there, Adobe shifted its strategy: no more software you could own, only software you could rent. Creative Cloud subscriptions became the norm. On the surface, it seemed flexible, but the fine print told another story. People signed up for “monthly” plans, only to realize they were actually yearly contracts disguised as monthly billing. Cancel early, and Adobe hit you with a massive fee — sometimes hundreds of dollars. To make matters worse, auto-renewal was inescapable. Customers weren’t just paying for software; they were locked into Adobe’s ecosystem like prisoners.
So when Adobe announced in 2022 that it would acquire Figma for $20 billion, creatives panicked. Everyone remembered FreeHand. Everyone saw the writing on the wall. Figma — lightweight, browser-based, focused, and collaborative — was everything Adobe wasn’t. It was growing fast, loved by designers, and free of predatory pricing traps. If Adobe got its hands on it, history would repeat itself.
But this time, regulators around the world stepped in. Britain’s CMA and the European Union argued that the acquisition would crush innovation. After months of roadblocks, Adobe backed out. And in doing so, they accidentally armed their greatest rival.
As part of the failed deal, Adobe owed Figma a breakup fee of $1 billion. That’s nearly three times the total funding Figma had raised in its entire history. Practically overnight, Figma had a war chest — courtesy of the very company trying to bury it.
With this momentum, Figma doubled down. By 2025, they expanded their suite beyond design, launching tools like Figma Make, Draw, Buzz, Grid, and Sites. Their flagship platform was already used by 95% of the Fortune 500, and revenue was soaring. Unlike most startups, Figma wasn’t just scaling — it was profitable.
Meanwhile, Adobe was stumbling. Users were fed up with cancellation traps. The FTC, under Lina Khan, filed a lawsuit directly targeting Adobe executives for anticompetitive practices. Their gamble on AI backfired, and their stock began to slide.
Then came the knockout punch: on July 31, 2025, Figma went public. Priced at $33 a share, the IPO exploded. Shares opened at $85, peaked at $124, and closed with a valuation of $68 billion — the biggest IPO of the year. Lina Khan herself called it proof that letting startups thrive independently creates more value than letting monopolies swallow them whole.
Yes, the stock has cooled since. But the bigger story remains: Adobe’s greed handed its fiercest competitor billions in cash, legitimacy, and a spotlight it couldn’t buy.
The war between Adobe and Figma isn’t about one company winning and the other dying. It’s about competition finally returning to the creative industry. For too long, Adobe strangled rivals and trapped customers. Now, creatives finally have a choice.
And that’s the real victory.
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