Figma

Within days of unveiling AI design features at Config 2024 in June 2024, designers showed Figma's 'Make Designs' AI feature reproducing near-pixel-perfect copies of Apple's Weather app interface and other prominent existing UIs. Figma CEO Dylan Field publicly apologized within 24 hours, paused the feature for additional safety review, and committed to retraining the model with a vetted training corpus. The episode highlighted the IP-leakage risks of training generative design AI on web-scraped UI corpora.

In April 2024 Figma announced a planned restructuring of its seat-pricing model that would have substantially raised costs for design teams, particularly at agencies. After widespread community pushback including a viral open letter and customer cancellation threats, CEO Dylan Field reversed the changes within ten days and committed to a transparent customer-feedback process before future pricing changes. The episode was a rare instance of a fast-growing software company walking back monetization changes under customer pressure.

Adobe and Figma jointly announced on December 18, 2023 that they were abandoning their proposed $20 billion acquisition after the UK Competition and Markets Authority and the European Commission both indicated the merger would significantly reduce competition in interactive product design software. Adobe paid Figma a $1 billion termination fee. The outcome was a rare instance of European competition enforcement effectively blocking a major US tech acquisition.