In September 2022, Adobe dropped the bombshell information that it supposed to purchase Figma for $20 billion. It was an enormous chunk of cash for a startup that had lately been valued at half that quantity, and it was a deal that might make traders and a few Figma workers rich past their wildest desires. However first it needed to cross regulatory muster — and that has confirmed stubbornly tough.

The truth is, greater than 13 months after the deal was introduced, the 2 corporations stay separate entities. A yr is a very long time within the tech world. Figma hasn’t been idly ready for its company suitor and has continued to work on the platform, hiring 500 new individuals for the reason that deal was introduced for a complete of 1,300 workers immediately.

The corporate additionally hosted the Config convention in June, attracting greater than 8,000 attendees to the occasion the place it introduced a brand new developer mode, placing the device in entrance of builders for the primary time. With builders representing a brand new space for each corporations, it may make Figma much more enticing to Adobe, ought to the deal undergo.

Regardless, when the deal was introduced, there have been rapid questions on whether or not Adobe was taking a key competitor off the market utilizing blunt drive market energy, or if it was filling a lacking piece in its product line. It will be as much as the regulators to make that willpower, nonetheless, and so they instantly went to work. Adobe and Figma representatives have spent good chunks of the final yr on airplanes going to speak to varied regulatory our bodies, making an attempt to persuade them that the deal is, in reality, not anticompetitive.

Whereas the 2 corporations can’t converse to one another — they each function fully independently all through this course of — it didn’t cease Figma from writing a weblog put up exploring what it would appear to be if the 2 corporations have been collectively, particularly since within the interim, Adobe added Firefly, its generative AI providing, to the Artistic Cloud fold.

At this level, it’s nonetheless as much as the regulators, and people regulators are nonetheless reviewing the filings greater than a yr later, leaving the deal in suspended animation. How the assorted regulatory companies determine will go a good distance towards figuring out whether or not Adobe and Figma stay separate entities or lastly come along with a ton of cash altering arms.

What’s the holdup?

When a deal entails an organization many understand to be a competitor that has succeeded in capturing the hearts and minds of a big market, and the place a truckload of dough is altering arms, nicely, it’s going to get the eye of regulators within the U.S., the EU and the U.Ok. And that’s precisely what occurred with this one.