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Yahoo
an hour ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Figma has filed for an IPO—here are 7 key takeaways
Design software company Figma has filed for an IPO, which is expected to raise up to $1.5 billion. Its entry to public markets comes more than a year after the collapse of Adobe's attempted $20 billion acquisition. The S-1 filing contains key insights about Figma's growth, customer base, and founder-led strategy. Read below for key insights potential investors should know. 1. Exceptional revenue growth and profitability 2024 revenue reached $749 million, up 48% from 2023. In Q1 2025, revenue grew 46% year-over-year to $228.2 million, and net income for the quarter tripled to $44.9 million, up from $13.5 million in Q1 2024. Figma was profitable in 2023, but reported a large net loss of $732 million in 2024 due to a one-time employee stock compensation event, not ongoing operations. The company returned to profitability by late 2024 and into 2025. 2. Massive market reach and customer base 13 million monthly active users as of early 2025. 95% of Fortune 500 companies use Figma, and two-thirds of its users are not professional designers, indicating broad adoption across business functions. As of March 2025, Figma had 1,031 customers contributing over $100,000 annually (up 47% year-over-year) and 11,107 customers contributing over $10,000 annually. 3. IPO structure and leadership control Figma is pursuing a dual-class share structure: CEO Dylan Field will retain majority voting power through super-voting Class B shares, protecting founder-led strategic direction post-IPO. Field personally controls about 75% of voting rights, with cofounder Evan Wallace's family trust holding about a third of the special voting shares (Field controls their votes). 4. Financial health and use of proceeds Figma reports minimal debt, only a revolving credit line. Proceeds from the IPO are expected to support global expansion, R&D, AI innovation, enterprise integration, and possible acquisitions. 5. Strategic positioning and competitive landscape Figma's S-1 mentions AI hundreds of times, highlighting both the opportunity and challenge of integrating generative AI into design workflows. The company warns that AI investments may impact efficiency in the near term but are seen as critical for future growth. Figma's collaborative, cloud-based platform is positioned as a solution to fragmented design workflows, enabling real-time, multi-user collaboration and seamless designer-developer handoff. The failed $20 billion Adobe acquisition (blocked by regulators) continues to shape market expectations. Recent secondary transactions valued Figma at $12.5 billion, but analysts expect a public valuation in the $15 billion to $20 billion range. 6. Liquidity and employee morale A significant 2024 tender offer allowed employees and executives to sell shares pre-IPO, providing liquidity and potentially aiding retention. CEO Dylan Field sold $20 million in shares during this event. 7. IPO details and market context Figma will list on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker 'FIG.' The number of shares and price range have not yet been disclosed. The IPO is expected to raise up to $1.5 billion, potentially making it one of the largest tech IPOs of 2025, rivaling CoreWeave's offering. Disclaimer: For this story, Fortune used generative AI to help with an initial draft. An editor verified the accuracy of the information before publishing. This story was originally featured on Sign in to access your portfolio
Time of India
7 hours ago
- Business
- Time of India
South Korea faces dramatic population crash, could have just 7.5 million people by 2125
South Korea's Worst-Case Scenario: Just 7.5 Million People by 2125 Live Events Aging Population to Outnumber Working-Age Adults Younger Koreans Prioritize Stability Over Family Life FAQs (You can now subscribe to our (You can now subscribe to our Economic Times WhatsApp channel South Korea's population may shrink to only 15% of where it stands today by 2125 if the current trend of demographic decline continues, found a private research institute in Seoul, as per a Korean Peninsula Population Institute for Future estimated that under its worst-case scenario, the nation's population would decline from 51.68 million today to only 7.53 million by 2125, which is less than the number of people currently living just in the city of Seoul, as per The Korea Herald report. Even in the most optimistic scenario, the population would decline to less than a third of its present size, at just over 15 million, according to the report. While the median projection for the 2125 population is 11.15 million people, as per the research also found that the rapidly increasing pace of population fall in the median scenario would see the population drop 30% by 2075 and then by more than half over the following 50 years, according to The Korea READ: Vinod Khosla's dire warning: AI could wipe out 80% of jobs and crush Fortune 500 giants by 2030 The institute used a cohort component method to find the latest long-term forecast of Korea's demographic trends over the next century, as per the report. The method is an internationally recognised technique that estimates future populations by incorporating factors like birth rates, mortality rates and immigration patterns, reported The Korea to the report, the drop in population is because of falling birth rates and also due to a compounding effect; with fewer people in each successive generation, the pool of potential parents shrinks, further accelerating the research found that even the ageing crisis is expected to deepen, and in 75 years, the worst forecast is that for every 100 people of working age, defined as 15 to 64 years old, there will be 140 seniors aged 65 or older, as reported by The Korea present, 100 working-age individuals support about 30 senior citizens, which indicates that South Korea is on track to become an 'inverted pyramid' society, where the number of dependents will outnumber those who provide support, according to the READ: Diddy and the Mann Act: What the law says and why he's not guilty of trafficking The research also mentioned details of a social sentiment analysis based on some 60,000 posts from the workplace community app Blind, which focused on the thoughts of people in their 20s to 40s about marriage and childbirth, as per the findings of Blind show that younger generations now prioritise 'money' and 'housing' over 'love' when discussing marriage, reported The Korea Herald. Financial burdens were a key concern in the conversations regarding childbirth, as per the study concluded that decisions on marriage and parenting are increasingly influenced by economic conditions, rather than personal preference, according to The Korea READ: Diddy verdict in — you won't believe his net worth or how he's paying those massive legal bills Because fewer people are having children, and each smaller generation means even fewer parents in the between 7.5 million (worst-case) and 15.7 million (best-case), down from 51.7 million today, as per the Korea Herald report.
Time of India
8 hours ago
- Business
- Time of India
Vinod Khosla's dire warning: AI could wipe out 80% of jobs and crush Fortune 500 giants by 2030
Vinod Khosla predicts AI's rapid advancement will automate 80% of economically valuable jobs within five years, potentially eliminating the need for work by 2040. He anticipates a faster demise of Fortune 500 companies in the 2030s due to AI-driven disruption. Khosla also foresees AI transforming healthcare and the widespread adoption of household robots, alongside advancements in clean energy sources. Tired of too many ads? Remove Ads A Wild Technological Shift Is Already Underway AI Could Handle Most Valuable Jobs By 2030 Tired of too many ads? Remove Ads Fortune 500 Companies Could Disappear Faster Than Ever Healthcare Will Be Transformed by AI Your Home Might Have a Robot Taking Care of Everything Soon A Bright Future for Clean, Cheap Energy FAQs Tech investor and billionaire entrepreneur Vinod Khosla has warned that artificial intelligence is advancing so quickly it could automate most jobs, and, by the 2030s, some of the Fortune 500 companies will be gone, according to a an interview on the 'Uncapped with Jack Altman' podcast, Khosla shared his predictions, saying AI will be able to perform 80% of any economically valuable job within just five more years, and by 2040, he predicts, people won't need to work at all to survive, as per a report by Fortune.A venture capitalist and early investor in companies like Square and Instacar described that the current technology cycle as 'crazy and frenetic,' and adding that, 'I've never seen a cycle like this…almost every job is being reinvented, every material thing is being reinvented differently with AI as a driver,' as quoted in the report. Khosla compared the scale of change to the 1960s, saying, 'We're going to see this large change in such a short time, it's almost hard to imagine how society adjusts,' as quoted by Fortune in its READ: Diddy verdict in — you won't believe his net worth or how he's paying those massive legal bills The Indian-American billionaire businessman anticipated that 'Within the next five years, any economically valuable job humans can do, AI will be able to do 80% of it…80% of all jobs can be done by an AI,' as quoted in the report. He even pointed out that by 2040, 'the need to work will go away. People will work on things because they want to, not because they need to pay their mortgage,' as quoted by predicted a rise in the demise of large incumbent companies, as he said, 'One of my predictions is the 2030s will see a faster rate of demise of Fortune 500 companies than we've ever seen…that transition won't happen from existing companies. Somebody new will reinvent this,' as quoted in the READ: Zuckerberg's $100 million lure: Why top Chinese and Indian AI minds are joining his Superintelligence Project During the interview, he also forecasted about the future of healthcare. He asked that, 'If all medical expertise is free…you have an unlimited number of primary care doctors, oncologists, gastroenterologists, mental health therapists…how would you redesign the health care system?", and then he argued that entrenched interests and regulatory barriers will slow, but not stop, AI-driven transformation , according to the Fortune investor even predicted about robotics, as he said that, 'almost everybody in the 2030s will have a humanoid robot at home…probably starting with something narrow like doing your cooking for you,' and pointed out that the main bottleneck is not hardware but intelligence, as per the READ: Kamala Harris is back, urges Americans to call their representatives and block Trump's Big, Beautiful Bill Khosla is 'very bullish about energy,' especially fusion and super-hot geothermal, which he believes could make power 'cheaper than natural gas,' as reported by according to Khosla. He believes AI will soon be able to perform the majority of economically valuable tasks that humans currently do, as per the Fortune predicted that he sees personal assistant robots starting with simple household tasks like cooking by the 2030s.
Entrepreneur
11 hours ago
- Business
- Entrepreneur
The $3.1 Trillion in Value Companies Still Overlook
By bringing together untapped data from across the organization, businesses can gain new insights that drive real results Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own. There's a reason the OECD slashed US growth outlook to an anemic 1.6% this year. Inflation forecasts have risen, major companies are warning of slower sales and tariffs have led to unprecedented trade uncertainty. Yet even as storm clouds gather, most businesses still aren't tapping a critical resource to boost their bottom line: their own data. This isn't a new story. For years, analysts have been lamenting the estimated $3.1 trillion in value trapped in so-called "dark data," information companies collect but don't use for decision-making. Much of this is internal workforce data, information about people and operations. Companies are still failing to draw a line between siloed people data and real business outcomes, from sales to customer satisfaction and even employee retention. But AI is suddenly changing everything. With new tools, businesses are figuring out how to use this buried data and seeing enormous payoffs. Here's how. The problem isn't a data shortage. It's a data disconnect Despite a decade of talk about data-driven decisions, 85% of Fortune 500 companies still aren't using their workforce data effectively. Here's why: Organizational silos are alive and well. HR, finance, sales and ops all operate on different systems, using different metrics, protecting different turf. Tools are fragmented. Even within a single team, critical platforms like payroll, performance and learning systems don't talk to each other. Insight still depends on analysts. Finding value often requires days of spreadsheet wrangling, a luxury most teams don't have. The result: billions of data points generated daily, but very little converted into insight or action. The usual approaches all fall short — massive investments in data warehouses, standing up centralized data teams or launching internal dashboards. These solutions often miss the mark, not because the data isn't there, but because it lacks context, relevance or timeliness. When that unused data is about your workforce, the risk multiplies. As organizations face mounting pressure to improve productivity and reduce costs, failing to act on workforce data isn't just inefficient. It's expensive. It means workforce transformation efforts are being built on gut feel, not insight, attrition mitigation strategies are generic and talent investments aren't targeted. Business-critical roles go unfilled not because there's no solution, but because the data was never brought to light. Take a leading healthcare provider we work with. Lab work routinely ground to a halt every Monday and Tuesday, costing millions in delays. The lab's operations team blamed low demand. But the HR data told a different story: Those days were chronically short-staffed with qualified nurses. No one had connected the dots because no one had access to all the dots. Once the company integrated HR scheduling data with lab operations, they immediately optimized staffing and recaptured lost revenue. That's the power of activating workforce data. Related: Mark Zuckerberg Reveals Meta Superintelligence Labs, Names Who He Poached From OpenAI, Google, Anthropic From information overload to actionable intelligence The bigger issue: The real danger here isn't just 'dark data.' It's that critical intelligence about your people remains invisible and unleveraged at the exact moment it's needed most. And that's precisely where AI comes into play. New AI tools are giving companies new ways to ask and answer business-critical questions about their workforce in real-time: "Which frontline location is most likely to miss its weekly sales target?" "What percentage of attrition is tied to one underperforming manager?" "Where are we overpaying for overtime due to poor scheduling?" AI assistants now let frontline managers connect the dots by posing questions in plain language. Behind the scenes, these tools knit together a cross-section of data points from performance reports, engagement platforms, attendance systems and even compensation records. But the manager gets exactly what they need: a specific answer and a clear rationale. When this works, it's not just insightful. It's operationally game-changing. A few examples I've seen up close: Reece Group used AI to go from guesswork to precision workforce planning. The global plumbing and HVAC distributor had a problem: high turnover and absenteeism were threatening a critical same-day delivery pilot. By combining absence history, engagement data and shift rosters, they predicted absences two weeks in advance, giving ops time to rebalance labor and avoid service disruption. Providence tapped AI to find the sweet spot for pay bumps. The healthcare provider leveraged historical data to determine if and how raising salaries would affect turnover, and what it would cost. Providence discovered that only a tiny fraction of its jobs were sensitive to compensation. By paying a targeted group of employees to stick around, the company saved $6 million a year and boosted retention by 30% in key areas. Related: How to Effectively Integrate AI into Your Organizational Strategy 4 takeaways for leaders For leaders looking to leverage AI to connect their own workforce data with business outcomes, it's worth remembering that technology is only part of the solution. Some key steps: 1. Don't start with tech. Start with shared KPIs. The most successful transformations begin by aligning cross-functional teams on business outcomes, not tool stacks. 2. Build hybrid roles to bridge silos. Functions like RevOps, FinOps and People Analytics are designed to sit between orgs. They're the connective tissue that turns data into strategy. 3. Focus on user-first design. AI is only useful when it's accessible. To democratize insights, prioritize tools that let frontline managers ask real questions and get actionable answers without technical skills. 4. Be ready for hard truths. Workforce data can expose inefficiencies, inequities and tough management challenges. Companies that succeed won't just see the issues. They'll act on them. Almost every company has an abundance of data. It's what they do with it that counts. Organizations that tap into the power of connecting workforce data with business data will make faster, smarter and profitable decisions. When corporations are going bankrupt at the highest rate in decades, staying in the dark isn't an option.
Forbes
12 hours ago
- Business
- Forbes
How Higher Education Can Evolve To Prepare Employable AI-Ready Leaders
Cambridge, MA, USA - October 10, 2017: View of the iconic architecture of the Harvard University in ... More Cambridge, MA, USA with some locals, tourists, and students passing by. getty Artificial intelligence is a present reality transforming the nature of work, leadership, and learning. As the pace of AI adoption accelerates, a pressing question confronts colleges and universities: How can we equip students to lead in the AI era? The 2025 Corporate Recruiters Survey from the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC) offers a compelling answer. Drawing on insights from over 1,100 global recruiters and hiring managers, including many from Fortune 500 firms, the survey highlights a decisive shift: AI fluency now ranks as the top skill employers expect to need within the next five years. This is a sharp rise from previous years, where AI competencies were viewed as a technical bonus rather than a professional necessity. Employers are no longer seeking specialists alone. They are prioritizing graduates who can integrate AI tools into broader strategic thinking, solve complex problems, and communicate effectively across disciplines and cultures. 'As AI becomes more integral to decision-making and strategy,' notes GMAC CEO Joy Jones in their press release, 'employers increasingly turn to business school graduates for their versatility, critical thinking, and ability to lead through technological transformation.' The GMAC findings align with broader trends. The World Economic Forum's 2023 Future of Jobs Report found that over 75% of companies anticipate adopting AI in some form by 2027. Six of the ten most in-demand skills identified were non-technical, including analytical thinking, creativity, resilience, and leadership. According to Pearson's Lost in Transition report, inefficiencies in career transitions and skills mismatches cost the U.S. economy an estimated $1.1 trillion annually, underscoring the urgent need for institutions to align education with evolving workforce demands—especially as AI reshapes the labor landscape. To remain relevant and responsive, colleges should implement five strategies that directly align with labor market expectations: Integrate AI Across All Disciplines AI must not be siloed within computer science departments. History students should analyze how AI is reshaping public memory; psychology majors must understand AI's role in mental health interventions; business students should model AI's impact on organizational strategy. AI fluency should become a baseline competency, akin to writing or quantitative reasoning. Institutions should prioritize experiential learning that brings students together across disciplines to prototype AI applications, tackle ethical dilemmas, or design public-interest technology. These experiences cultivate both skill and confidence in navigating ambiguity—a trait highly prized by employers. Expose Students To Diverse Models And Modalities Understanding generative AI requires more than proficiency with ChatGPT. Students should engage with a range of tools and models, from open-source frameworks like LLaMA and Mistral to domain-specific tools in design, health, finance, and media. This breadth fosters comparative literacy and prepares students to make informed choices about tool use and integration. Prioritize Critical Thinking And Ethical Reasoning As AI increasingly mediates knowledge and decision-making, the ability to interrogate its outputs, detect bias, and assess implications becomes essential. Courses should challenge students to critique AI-generated content, simulate high-stakes decisions, and develop frameworks for responsible innovation. Reinforce Professionalism In A Hybrid World While the GMAC survey confirms that most employers view Gen Z hires as adequately professional, one-quarter of recruiters in client-facing industries—particularly healthcare and consulting—express concern. Colleges should address this directly, offering targeted instruction in digital presence, interpersonal communication, and executive functioning for hybrid environments. Reimagining Higher Education For The Age Of AI AI does not diminish the value of higher education, but it changes some of the roles that it plays. Colleges are not simply preparing students for jobs, but for civic, ethical, and intellectual leadership in an era of exponential change. This requires a curriculum that integrates technological fluency with critical inquiry, interdisciplinary perspective, and moral imagination. The GMAC survey sends a clear signal: Employers continue to place their trust in higher education, particularly in institutions that produce agile, thoughtful, and technologically adept graduates. To honor that trust, institutions must be willing to evolve—boldly, intentionally, and without delay.
