Figma's CPO On Navigating The GenAI Revolution: 'It's A Very Dynamic Landscape.'

When Yuhki Yamashita joined Figma six years ago, the collaborative design platform was already transforming how teams create digital products. But nothing could have prepared the Chief Product Officer for the whirlwind of change that generative AI would bring to his industry—and the radical rethinking it would demand of Figma's entire approach to product development.

"It's a very, very dynamic landscape right now," Yamashita told me during a recent interview in Paris, just weeks after Figma's Config 2025 conference where the company unveiled an ambitious product expansion.

Companies like Figma have built their reputations on methodical, strategic planning. But they now find themselves racing to adapt to AI capabilities that evolve by the month, not year.

For design professionals and the broader tech industry, Figma's evolution offers a crucial case study of how established platforms are wrestling with AI's disruptive potential. As teams increasingly question whether they need specialized design tools when AI can generate interfaces from simple prompts, Figma's response reveals both the opportunities and existential challenges facing software companies in the generative AI era.

"We've had to transform our culture into one where people are able to play with the latest things and not be too dogmatic about projects and roadmap," Yamashita explained. "They need to adapt to the capabilities that we're seeing out in the market."

From Design Tool to AI-Powered Platform

Since its founding in 2012, Figma has become the dominant platform for collaborative design, used by millions of designers, developers, and product managers to create everything from mobile apps to enterprise software. The company's browser-based approach revolutionized an industry previously dominated by desktop applications, enabling real-time collaboration that felt natural to teams already working in Google Docs and Slack.

In September 2022, Adobe announced its intention to acquire Figma, in a deal valued at approximately $20 billion in cash and stock. The acquisition was part of Adobe’s strategy to expand its offerings for collaborative design and to compete more directly in the digital product design space.

However, the deal faced intense regulatory scrutiny in both the United States and Europe over concerns that it would reduce competition in the design software market. Amid growing pressure and the likelihood of regulatory blocks, Adobe and Figma jointly decided to terminate the acquisition in December 2023.

In the middle of the acquisition drama, OpenAI released the first public version of ChatGPT in November 2022. This posed a new challenge to both companies. Suddenly, anyone could describe an interface in plain language and receive a working prototype, potentially bypassing design tools entirely.

As the capability of LLM-based tools has rapidly evolved, critics on social media began asking: "I have OpenAI. Why would they use Figma? I can just do my own whole thing."

As it became clear that Figma would have to navigate the GenAI world on its own, Yamashita said the company re-focused on its core mission.

"Our framework for AI has always been about how do we both lower the floor and raise the ceiling?" Yamashita said. "By which we mean, how do we bring more people into the process and use AI to help do that? But also, how do we raise the ceiling so that people who are experts can still have access to things that they haven't been able to?"

The Professional Advantage

Rather than viewing AI as a threat, Yamashita argues that professional design teams represent Figma's crucial differentiator. While consumer AI tools excel at generating quick prototypes, they often fall short when users need precise control or want to iterate toward perfection.

"Our audience is very professional, and as part of that, they want to iterate it to perfection. They have very specific needs," he said. "It's really great to get these AIs to create a viable prototype. But from there, what they're doing is iterating it to exactly what they want."

This insight shapes Figma's approach to AI integration. Rather than replacing human creativity, tools like Figma Make are designed to eliminate tedious tasks, such as populating designs with realistic content instead of placeholder text, while preserving the collaborative refinement process that professional teams value.

The strategy appears to be working. According to the company, approximately two-thirds of Figma's monthly active users now identify beyond traditional design roles, with around 30% self-identifying as developers. This expansion reflects Figma's evolution from a design tool into a broader platform for product development.

Config 2025: New Tools to Bridge Idea and Execution

At Config 2025 in early May, Figma unveiled what Yamashita described as the company's "most significant AI launch to date." This included a suite of new products designed to support what he calls the complete "product development lifecycle." Each tool targets a specific phase of moving from initial concept to shipped product, reflecting Figma's ambition to become more than just a design platform.

Figma Make represents the most technically ambitious launch. The AI-powered tool can transform written prompts or existing Figma designs into fully functional web applications, complete with working code and real data integration. "You can take a design that you already have and then add a prompt to it to say, okay, make this more real or more dynamic," Yamashita said. The tool leverages Anthropic's Claude model for coding capabilities, allowing users to create prototypes that can either serve as starting points for further development or be deployed directly as working applications.

Figma Sites addresses the longstanding gap between design and publication. The product enables teams to build and publish dynamic websites directly from their designs, incorporating what the company describes as "limitless interactions and customizations powered by code and AI." This represents Figma's first major step into allowing designs to reach end users without requiring separate development work.

Figma Draw enhances the platform's core design capabilities with advanced vector editing and illustration tools. While less revolutionary than the AI-powered products, it reflects Figma's commitment to serving professional designers who need sophisticated creative tools. "We want to raise the ceiling so that people who are experts can still have access to things that they haven't been able to," Yamashita said, explaining how Draw fits into the company's broader AI strategy.

Figma Buzz targets brand and marketing teams, enabling them to create visual assets at scale while maintaining brand consistency. The product includes built-in AI capabilities specifically designed for marketing content creation—addressing a use case that has grown significantly as companies seek to produce more content across multiple channels.

Beyond these four products, Figma also introduced enhanced AI features across its existing platform, including advanced image generation and editing capabilities, auto-suggest features for workflow optimization, and new AI tools for FigJam, its collaborative whiteboard product. A new Grid feature promises to streamline the handoff between designers and developers by automatically generating CSS code for responsive layouts.

All products have launched in beta, with Yamashita emphasizing that the company deliberately chose to release early versions rather than wait for perfect integration. "We didn't want to wait on that," he said, acknowledging that there's "so much more we think we can do to make it feel integrated into our process."

The bundling strategy reflects Figma's evolution toward a comprehensive platform. Users with paid Figma Design accounts receive access to all new products automatically, while the company has created specialized bundles for different user types, including a new "Content Seat" designed specifically for marketing teams using Figma Buzz.

Adapting at AI Speed

Yamashita also noted that AI has forced Figma to abandon traditional product planning cycles. The company's leadership, including CEO Dylan Field, has actively discouraged teams from creating detailed one-year roadmaps.

"Dylan even recently asked, 'Should we be doing one-year planning?'" Yamashita said. "Instead it's great to have a North Star where you want to head. But we can't be married to those kinds of projects."

This agility proved crucial for Figma Make, which Yamashita said was conceived and built in just two to three months, a timeline that would have been unthinkable for a major product launch in Figma's pre-AI era. The speed reflects both the rapid pace of AI model improvements and the company's recognition that waiting for perfect integration could mean missing the wave entirely.

The company has also had to balance building its own AI capabilities with leveraging external models. While Figma continues developing proprietary models—though Yamashita remained circumspect about details—it has embraced partnerships with companies like OpenAI and Anthropic to provide users with cutting-edge capabilities quickly.

"Claude is amazing at coding," Yamashita noted, explaining the partnership with Anthropic that powers Figma Make. "Let's take advantage of that."

Global Expansion and Future Challenges

Beyond AI, Figma faces the complex challenge of international expansion while navigating varying regulatory environments. The company recently launched complete localization for Brazil and maintains offices across nine countries, with approximately 85% of its monthly active users located outside the United States.

In Europe, Yamashita acknowledged that regulatory requirements like GDPR initially created friction, particularly around cloud adoption. However, he noted that enterprise customers' enthusiasm for AI capabilities has reduced resistance to cloud-based tools.

The French market, where our interview took place, exemplifies this evolution. "A few years ago we talked about service design, people were like, what is that?" Yamashita observed. "And now that's an expectation."

As Figma continues expanding its platform beyond design into areas like marketing content creation (Figma Buzz) and website publishing (Figma Sites), the company faces the ongoing challenge of maintaining its core identity while serving an increasingly diverse user base.

Looking ahead, Yamashita emphasized that the recent launches represent just the beginning of Figma's AI transformation.

"It's just the beginning," he said. "We've already gotten a lot more feedback about how we can make this even more useful. There's a huge roadmap ahead, which we're excited about."