Figma deal is off

I was talking about Figma and their billing practice and how they were a match for Adobe.

Turns out over the week-end, it was announced that Adobe deal to purchase Figma for $20B was pulled off because of the push back from the EU regulator.

Techcrunch tells Adobe and Figma end $20B acquisition plans after regulatory headwinds in Europe:

Adobe’s $20 billion mega-bid to buy rival Figma is now officially dead, after the companies said today that regulatory pushback in Europe had caused them to put an end to the acquisition plans.

But for Figma:

As a result of all this, Adobe will now have to pay Figma a termination fee of $1 billion, which was contractually payable in the event of the transaction failing to attain regulatory clearance

This feels like a text book competitive issue, and one where Figma was taking the lead by optimizing for collaboration, while Adobe was optimizing for rent extraction.

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