Are big tech killing innovation? 😵

Adobe paid an inflated $20bn for Figma. 💸 Why were Adobe willing to pay so much?

On the face of it they are not direct competitors, however, Figma is in a space that has grown due to the increase in remote working. Project management and development tools have helped businesses to continue to be agile in a remote-first culture.

This makes it a strategically important acquisition for Adobe.

Quantico Takeaway

We’ve seen similar transactions in the past such as Facebook (now Meta’s) purchase of Whatsapp for $19bn. Whatsapp was viewed as significant strategic threat to Facebook as it had the potential to leverage its larger user base to build a platform that was bigger than a messaging service.

The evolution of Whatsapp paused and Facebook ensured it didn’t develop further. While everyone loves a big pay day this sort of short-term thinking limits innovation in the digital sector in the long-run. We’ll be watching Adobe’s next steps keenly. 👀