Shares of design software company Figma plunged 14% in extended trading, as investors took a dim view of Figma’s first quarter earnings report. 

Figma CEO Dylan Field, who cofounded the company in 2012 and watched its $20 billion acquisition by Adobe fall apart in 2023, isn’t one to get caught up in the negative. “We’re at the very start of what I hope is a long term relationship together,” a confident Field told listeners as he kicked off the earnings call, taking advantage of the opportunity to demonstrate Figma’s presentation technology.

Prior to the call, Field spoke to Fortune and shared his thoughts on one of the most important trends affecting his business: AI.

“No one knows whether we’re going to look back in five years at everything that’s happening right now in AI and say, ‘Oh my God, those were the bubbliest of times,” Field said. “Or: ‘Wow, we totally underestimated the effect it would have on society.’ But for Figma, what I think will be true in five years is that we’re always trying to make it so you can go as fast as possible from idea to production. And I think with AI, you can really accelerate that.”

AI is at the center of the private and public markets, and is widely viewed as a key tailwind—and risk factor—for Figma. In its fiscal second quarter, Figma grew revenue a healthy 41% year-over-year to $249.6 million, roughly in-line with analyst expectations. Figma reported $28.2 million in net income, or break-even on a per share basis.  

Field believes one of the key intersections between AI and design is that AI tools will help broaden access, letting more people become designers. Figma added four new AI-native tools to its platform this quarter and told investors on the call to expect significant investments in AI going forward.

“We want to lower the floor, but raise the ceiling—make it so more people can participate in the design process, while also enabling professionals to do even more with AI,” Field told Fortune, reiterating a company mantra of “design is the differentiator.”

The “design as differentiator” thesis dates back to Figma’s early days. When Field was an intern at Flipboard in 2012, he noticed that, even then, companies were hiring more designers. 

And as mobile technology and consumer expectations evolved, he theorized design was becoming a critical differentiator, transitioning from a skill to a critical business advantage. That’s only more true today, he said, adding that “there’s a kind of talent war happening for design right now that’s being talked about in conversation a lot online.”

Ultimately, Field said, Figma’s approach to AI is about riding the wave. 

“Our philosophy is that as the models get better, we get better,” he said. “That’s always the test I have strategically for us.” 

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StubHub is giving a strong indication that its IPO is back on again. It filed a public S-1 in late March, then paused in April after the Trump administration’s tariffs spooked Wall Street. On Monday, it filed an updated S-1 that now includes Q1 2025 results.

IPO experts Renaissance Capital estimated in March that the IPO could raise $1 billion, and says this fresh S-1 could mean a debut next month. StubHub declined to comment on its IPO plans, citing its quiet period.

In 2024, it generated nearly $1.8 billion in revenue and recorded a net loss of $2.8 million. Its biggest shareholder is Madrone Partners (27.1%), followed by WestCap Management (10.8%) and Bessemer (9.6%). Founder CEO Eric Baker holds only 5.2% of the Class A shares, but he holds all of the super-voting rights Class B shares (4.95 million), which puts him in control with 90% of the vote.

There’s a long list of late-stage VC-backed tech companies with strong customer bases that Wall Street investment bankers would love to take public. Many of these multi-billion dollar companies, including Databricks, Klarna, Stripe, and SpaceX, have been subjects of IPO speculation for years. And then of course, there’s the crop of richly valued AI startups, from OpenAI and Anthropic, to Elon Musk’s xAI. 

Those companies will likely continue to be in the spotlight, but in conversations I had with several investors following Figma’s debut, other names came up as more likely to IPO sooner including Canva, Revolut, Midjourney, Motive, and Anduril. 

“Having positive IPOs is a good signal for everybody,” says Kirsten Green, founder and managing partner at Forerunner Ventures, whose portfolio company Chime recently went public and experienced a 37% pop in stock price on its first day of trading. (Forerunner also has investments in public company Hims & Hers and late stage private companies including Oura.) “I believe we should revisit this idea: an IPO is the Series A of being in the public market–and having that really be a motivator to people’s willingness, and maybe even eagerness to go public.”  (As if on cue, HeartFlow, a medical technology company, filed an S-1 for its IPO at a $1.3 billion valuation on August 1).

Kyle Stanford, the director of research on US venture capital at PitchBook, notes that just 18 venture-backed companies have gone public through June 30 of this year. This, he says, is a factor of policy uncertainties that translate to funding headwinds as well as the overfunding that occurred in 2021 that continues to stymie venture capital. “Figma hopefully starts to break the dam, but it’s been a pretty slow quarter,” he says.

Though Figma, which makes design software, is profitable and has a strong set of integrated AI capabilities, these qualities are not essential to companies bound for IPO success, says Stanford. He says that investors would prefer companies to generate a minimum of $200 million in revenue that grows at high rates and prioritize positive free cash flow over profitability. Having an AI story is also “very important,” unless the company is very high growth and profitable by wide margins. 

Canva may be a most-compelling case since it’s a design company with similar fundamentals to that of Figma, said multiple investors I interviewed. Design collaboration company Canva has raised about $589 million over 18 rounds at a $32 billion valuation, higher than that of Figma’s at the time of its IPO. “Canva is a big winner when it comes to what happened yesterday with Figma,” says Jason Shuman, an investor at Primary Ventures. Shuman, who is not an investor in Canva, points to Canva’s $3 billion annual revenue and 35% year-over-year growth as signs of its business’ durability.

Others agree. “Canva—after looking at Figma, holy crap—they’re going to try to IPO as soon as possible,” says Felix Wang, Managing Director and Partner at Hedgeye Risk Management, who is not a Canva investor.  Canva, which was recently valued at $37 billion during a share buy back, did not respond to Fortune’s request for comment.

Wang and others note that the surge in Figma’s price is, in many ways, not actually driven by Figma. Rather, the market is at an all-time high, causing retail trader demand for companies new to market. “They don’t even know this company, but they know it’s a new company,” says Wang of retail traders investing in Figma. “They’re going to put some money into it, and then, more interestingly: they’re going to show it off on social media.”

As Figma is to Canva; NuBank is to Revolut, reasons Primary’s Shuman. He looks at fintech NuBank, which is up around 13% from its early 2025 IPO and thinks that Revolut, which has a very similar business model, could copycat. Revolut told Fortune in a statement: “our focus is not on if or when we IPO, but on continuing to expand the business, building new products, and providing better and cheaper services to serve our growing global customer base.” 

Another potential IPO candidate in the near-future is chipmaker Cerebras, says Primary’s Shuman, who invests in vertical AI, B2B, SMB and finance and defense companies but has no stake in Cerebras or Revolut. (Cerebras filed an S-1 in September 2024 but its IPO was delayed by regulators concerned about a $335 million investment by UAE-based G42. Now, it’s been cleared by regulators for a public market listing, but the company has held off on an IPO as it fundraises $1 billion, reports The Information.)

Many companies, including the largest and hottest private company OpenAI (which just nabbed a $300 billion valuation, per the New York Times), have significant incentives to remain private. This is because they can avoid public scrutiny that arises from disclosures required of public companies and have access to significant private capital for liquidity infusions that are often essential. 

Yet, the fact that behemoths like OpenAI, Stripe ($91 billion valuation) and SpaceX ($400 billion valuation) are private may even be a hidden cost for the public market. “I’m going to get philosophical,” says Forerunner’s Green. “Part of the public market was created so the broader population could participate in the economy and in the growth of the economy; it wasn’t meant to sit in a few people’s hands.”

One behemoth may be entering the stock market limelight. Anduril, the defense tech company that nabbed a $30.5 billion valuation on its Series G, has incentives to remain private due to the nature of its business. But Pitchbook’s Stanford predicts it to be the next tech IPO. In addition to Anduril’s CEO announcing it will “definitely” become publicly traded, its value proposition is core to Trump Administration priorities in security and defense, which could make it a hot pick for investors, Stanford reasons. 

“Other than that,” he says the list of potential IPO candidates these days is long: “There’s probably about 300 other companies that it could be.”