Adobe offered $20 billion for Figma in 2022. Regulators killed the deal. Adobe walked away with a $1 billion bill and nothing else.
Figma went public in 2025. By the end of day one, it was worth $68 billion — more than triple what Adobe had offered.
Adobe had every execution advantage in software: distribution, sales infrastructure, balance sheet, brand. None of it let them build what Figma built. So they tried to buy it. And still couldn’t close.
AI is about to put every company in Adobe’s position — just without the checkbook to find out the hard way. Look at Olaplex, Liquid Death, Olipop, Rhode, and others in this article.
Execution is getting commoditized fast: AI now finds your entry points, tests your creative, optimizes your media buy, at the same speed for every competitor at once.
What it can’t do is decide what you own. That’s still the only thing worth owning.
In the AI economy, winning won’t come from being the best-known brand in a category. It will come from becoming the most trusted answer within the demand spaces customers actually inhabit.