The 250% First-Day Pop
Published October 4, 2026
On July 31, 2025, design-software maker Figma priced its IPO at $33 a share, opened near $85, and closed at $115.50 — a 250% first-day gain, the biggest debut pop for a U.S. company raising over $1 billion in at least three decades. The listing raised about $1.2 billion, valued the company near $19 billion, and instantly turned co-founder and CEO Dylan Field, 33, into a multi-billionaire.
On Thursday, July 31, 2025, shares of Figma Inc. began trading on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker FIG, and by the closing bell they had tripled. The collaborative design-software company had priced its initial public offering at $33 a share the night before. Shares opened at nearly $85 — valuing the company at about $50 billion — and trading was briefly halted after they rocketed past $112. They closed at $115.50, a 250% first-day gain that, according to Bloomberg data, was the most explosive debut for any U.S.-traded firm raising more than $1 billion in at least three decades.
The offering raised roughly $1.2 billion at an IPO valuation near $19 billion. The company itself sold 12.47 million new shares, while existing shareholders — including co-founder and CEO Dylan Field — sold 24.46 million shares, according to figures Bloomberg drew from Figma's filings. With employee stock options and restricted stock units counted, the fully diluted valuation stretched past $65 billion. That is more than triple the $20 billion Adobe had offered to buy the company before antitrust regulators in the United States and the United Kingdom blocked the deal in 2023, a collapse that left Adobe paying Figma a $1 billion termination fee.
The biggest winner was Field himself. Forbes estimated that the 33-year-old was worth about $1.8 billion at the IPO price, with another $1.3 billion in stock possible if the shares climbed to $130. By Thursday's close, the Bloomberg Billionaires Index put his fortune at $6.1 billion, just shy of the $7 billion cutoff for its ranking of the world's 500 richest people. His co-founder Evan Wallace, who left Figma in 2021, held a stake worth about $3.1 billion at the close — and had donated a third of his shares to the Marin Community Foundation, which fights homelessness, according to Axios. Venture backers cashed in too: Index Ventures held 62.57 million shares worth $5.3 billion at the opening price, and the top venture firms stood to make more than $6 billion collectively, the Venture Capital Journal reported.
The windfall extended deep into the company. A 2024 employee stock tender offer, priced at $23.19 a share for a $12.5 billion valuation, had already let many staff members turn some equity into cash before the listing. By the IPO, employee stock options and restricted stock units were a material part of the company's capitalization — the quiet compounding of startup equity turning into public-market wealth in a single morning. Figma's business gave the market reason to believe: the company reported $749 million in revenue for 2024, up 48% year over year, with $228.2 million in the first quarter of 2025 and 13 million monthly active users.
But an IPO pop is a moment, not a bank account. The stock cooled hard in the days after the debut, dropping more than 27% to about $88.60, a reminder that paper fortunes move with the market's mood. Most employees could not simply sell into the frenzy either: lock-up provisions kept most insider shares off the market, with a first tranche of employee-held shares becoming eligible for sale weeks after the listing. Field's own compensation underscored the point — Forbes noted that his biggest future payday, potentially another $1.3 billion, depended on the stock climbing to $130, not on where it opened.
The debut also ended one of the longest droughts in tech IPO history. After the market's post-2022 freeze, Figma's reception was read across Silicon Valley as proof that the window for high-growth software companies had reopened — demand for the offering far exceeded the shares on sale. Whether the billions on paper become billions in the bank will be decided over years, not a single trading day. For the engineers, designers, and early employees who traded salary for stock options, though, July 31, 2025 was the day the trade paid off in public.
The lesson: Startup equity can turn a salary into a fortune — but an IPO pop is a moment, not a bank account: paper wealth counts only when the price holds and the lock-up expires.
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